


Now and Then

by oldenuf2nb



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Bondage, Dark, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-13
Updated: 2007-06-25
Packaged: 2018-10-27 16:19:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10812555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldenuf2nb/pseuds/oldenuf2nb
Summary: Even the death of Voldemort did not end the struggle between good and evil. And even the discovery of a new and unexpected power cannot save Harry from having to deal, once and for all, with an old nemesis.





	1. Now and Then: Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).

NOW 

 

October 30th, 6:45 p.m. 

 

Ron Weasley leaned against the graffiti scrawled, grungy wall, watching his Auror partner of four years stripping off his work robes and dropping them carelessly to the refuse strewn floor, then begin to unbutton the striped button down he'd had on beneath them.

"You're sure about this?" Ron asked tightly, crossing his arms over his heavily muscled chest.

"Absolutely,” came the answer. Ron watched as the shirt came off, revealing a fitted white wife beater that stretched taut over an equally muscled chest, leaving bare broad shoulders and thick biceps. He crossed his arms and grabbed the hem of the shirt, yanking it off over his head, mussing his silky soft golden brown hair, causing it to fall into the wide brown eyes. Even in the faint light, his skin was a tawny tan, and the hair that ran from his navel to disappear into the waistband of his jeans was sable brown. Strong, square hands opened the button down fly, and he shoved the pants down strong legs and stepped out of them and his running shoes at the same time. "Did you get the stuff?"

"Yeah. It's there." Ron gestured to a pile of dark clothing on a rickety chair in the corner. "All black, as requested." White teeth flashed in the faint light as he shot Ron a smile.

"Hey, very emo,” he quipped. "Just the way our boy likes them." Ron looked away from that smile, a muscle in his jaw flexing. His partner crossed to him and gripped his shoulder. "Relax." He said firmly, squeezing him before letting go. "We've done our homework. We're ready. There won't be any surprises this time." Ron's eyes shifted back, and their gazes locked for a long moment. Finally, with a slight shrug, Ron nodded. "You ready, Seamus?" The brown haired man called out, his eyes still on Ron.

"Whenever you are."

"Let's do this." 

Seamus Finnegan, at least five inches shorter than both of the other men, came from a darkened corner, holding what looked like an over-sized pistol in his small hand. "Where do you want it?"

"Will it leave a bruise?"

"Probably."

"My neck, then." He shot Ron an impish smile. "It'll just look like a hickey."

"Christ." Ron spat, turning his back as Seamus put the muzzle against the golden brown throat just below the square jaw line and pulled a trigger. The taller man flinched but that was the extent of his reaction; there was only that small click, but Ron's shoulders hunched reflexively. "I hate that fucking thing.” he hissed.

"Yeah, well fortunately for you, it's not your neck." Seamus grinned up into brown eyes. "Literally." He took his wand from his back pocket and ran it over the tanned neck. In the spot where the gun had pressed, a small red glow appeared with each pass. "All set." He said to Ron's back. He looked up at the man before him once again. "It's good up to 50 miles. If he Apparates with you, press on it."

"Yeah, yeah." The brunette said impatiently. "Been there, don't that, Seamus."

"And it's my job to remind you, every time." The small Irishman raised an arched brow. "On me if you bite it, mate."

"Not going to happen."

"Don't go getting overconfident." Ron turned back, brows lowered. "He's dangerous as hell; you can't forget that."

Straight, dark brows lowered over the chocolate brown eyes. "Do you think you need to tell me that?" He said darkly. "Like I don't know how fucking diabolical this twisted prick is? I know, Ron. If anybody knows, I do."

"Which is why, just maybe, somebody else should do this." Ron caught his friend's hard bicep in his big hand and squeezed. 

His partner snorted. "You know damn well there isn't anyone else who can do what I do."

"Still..." Ron's blue eyes were clouded with worry.

"It has to be me, Ron.” he said with unwavering finality. "The bastard's taken enough; I want my life back, _mine_."

They stared into one another's eyes for a long time before Ron finally nodded in resignation. "Okay. Let's do this."

His partner nodded, then stepped back, braced his legs, dropped his hands to his sides, and closed his eyes. Ron watched, and for a few moments, nothing happened. Then he saw his friend begin to tremble, and a sheen of sweat broke out on the surface of the golden skin. Ron pursed his lips, one of his hands going to his jaw. He didn't understand this process; he never had, but it always worried him, even scared him a bit. And even though he had been assured over and over again that it didn't hurt, he still winced when the hands before him clenched into white knuckled fists. 

First, the color of the skin changed, fading from tawny gold to pale ivory. Then the muscles began to shrink, shift, until the body before him seemed to grow younger, more sinewy and yet softer, adolescent. And shorter. Inches seemed to evaporate from the six-foot frame until he was no taller than five and a half feet tall. The face went from sculpted, almost rugged to slender, pale and fine boned. Straight brows arched and darkened, the mouth softened, the nose thinned to a straight, aesthetic line. The hair's shiny brown thickened, the texture grew coarser, and it darkened to jet black, then formed itself into a chunky spiked look that was young, ragged, punk looking. Fingernails took on a coat of black polish, a piercing appeared in the left ear; one eyebrow, one nostril each acquired a small silver hoop. Black lipstick coated those soft lips, kohl shadow spread around the closed eyes as if by an invisible hand. He took a deep breath and released it slowly, and opened his eyes. And they were green; clear, piercing emerald green.

"Christ!" Seamus exploded. "That never fails to freak me the hell out."

A crooked smile curved the black painted lips. He looked at Ron, one arched black brow cocked. "Well?"

Ron shrugged. "You look like Harry.” he answered tightly. "A sixteen year-old, very pretty, scary Goth Harry."

"Which is precisely what was ordered, correct?"

"Correct." Ron looked pensive as he studied him. "Well," he said finally, "at least you got your own eye color back." 

Harry Potter grinned crookedly. 

 

_THEN_

_October of the previous year..._

_The last Great War to rock the wizarding world ended when Harry Potter was nineteen years old. He, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger had found and destroyed all of the Horcruxes. During the final battle, which took place on the grounds at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Ron killed the snake, Nagini, and Harry and Hermione had combined their power, and their deep love for one another, and had destroyed what was left of the "Dark Lord", Voldemort himself. They'd been lauded as heroes, the saviors of wizarding kind. Unfortunately, they'd destroyed only one Dark Wizard. Soon there were others more than happy to attempt to take his place._

_Some of the old names were gone; The elder Crabbe and Goyle had died at Hogwarts, as did Bellatrix Lestrange. Malfoy senior died in Azkaban, one of the last victims of the Dementors. In a moment of poetic justice, Remus Lupin had killed Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf who'd infected him in the first place, with a silver bullet from an enchanted gun. But that left dozens of others, followers of the Dark Lord now determined to set themselves up as the new face of evil. Severus Snape was still out there somewhere, along with the psychotic brother and sister who had played a role in Dumbledore's murder, and they weren't the only ones. The great darkness was gone, but pockets of evil went merrily on, so Ron and Harry did what they'd always planned to do; they'd entered the Auror's program. They graduated, with distinction, two years early at the age of twenty-one._

_Ron married Hermione when they were twenty-two, right after she became an Unspeakable at the Department of Mysteries. Harry and Ginny Weasley moved in together, but didn't marry until just after Ginny's twenty-first birthday. They had lived not far from one another, and not far from the Burrow, where the Weasley siblings had grown up, and even though they were still dealing with the remnants of Voldemort's regime, it was a time of peace, and happiness._

_They'd all been at a picnic at the Burrow when something Harry said in passing caught the attention of Nymphadora Tonks. Ginny was teasing her husband about his perpetually messy hair, threatening to shave his head._

_"Wouldn't matter,” he shrugged, grinning widely. "It would just be back, exactly the same, by the next morning."_

_Tonks had looked at him quizzically. "What do you mean?"_

_"Just what I said,” Harry answered. "Drove my aunt to distraction when I was a kid. She'd cut it, next day it would be back as if she hadn't touched it."_

_Tonks frowned. "Harry, didn't your dad teach himself to be an animagus?"_

_"Yeah. So did Sirius and Pettigrew. Why?"_

_She stared at him for a moment longer, then shook her head. "Nothing."_

_It wasn't until a week later that she approached him at work with a theory; he was an undiscovered metamorphmagus. At first, Harry had laughed._

_"Tonks, I think I would have noticed!"_

_"Why?" she argued. "Your relatives never told you that there was a possibility that you might be magical; you wouldn't have known what to look for. Why do you think your hair grew back?"_

_"Because when my aunt cut it, I looked like a geek. I hated it."_

_She cocked her head to one side. "Hence, you grew it back. You changed your appearance at will, Harry. That's the definition of a metamorphmagus."_

_He still hadn't bought into it, but when Tonks had persisted that she wanted to test him to be sure, he'd humored her. The first time they'd met had been at the Harry and Ginny's tiny kitchen table._

_"If there was one thing about you that you could change, one thing about your appearance," Tonks said earnestly, "what would it be?"_

_"The fucking scar.” Harry said emphatically. Tonks smiled._

_"I figured. Okay, here's what I want you to do" she said conversationally. "I want you to close your eyes, and imagine the skin on your forehead without the scar. Picture it smooth, completely unblemished. Come on, Harry." She persisted when he just stared at her. "Close your eyes." He did so grudgingly. "Okay, picture it now. Smooth, fair, unmarred, as if the scar had never been and...Holy shit!" Tonks breathed._

_He heard Ginny gasp, and his eyes snapped open. "What?"_

_They both stared. "Sweetheart," Ginny said, her eyes round in awe, "it's gone."_

_"It isn't,” Harry countered brusquely, his hand going to his forehead. He ran his fingers over the skin. "It's still there, I can feel it."_

_"But we can't see it,” Tonks beamed. She dug in her purse for a compact, and held it out to him. "See for yourself."_

_Harry opened the small mirror with hands that were faintly unsteady, and stared in astonishment at the smooth, perfect skin of his forehead. He even lifted his fringe with his hand. The scar, which had been a part of him his entire life, was gone. "I'll be goddamned,” he breathed. "Can I bring it back?"_

_Tonks nodded. "Just visualize it." He closed his eyes and concentrated, and the scar slowly reappeared. Tonks shook her head in disbelief. "I've never seen anyone get this that fast, Harry." She said softly. "It must be really strong in you."_

_After that, he met with Tonks almost daily for the next few weeks, and it became clear that his ability even out-stripped her own. She could change her hair or her features; Harry could quite literally become someone else, from their height, to their body type, to their voice. And he could hold the transformation effortlessly. The only time he reverted to his own appearance was when he chose, or when he fell asleep._

_Tonks was thrilled. "Think of the undercover work you could do, Harry!"_

_That proved to be true; for the first time in his life, undercover Auror work was an option. For the first time, everyone in the wizarding world didn't know immediately who he was, just by looking at him. Harry Potter could become unrecognizable. Which came in really handy when the time came for him to die._


	2. Now and Then: Chapter 2

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 6:48 pm.

Ron watched as Harry stepped into the straight-legged black jeans and fastened them around his slender waist. He looked so bloody small, even effeminate. The transformation was really startling, for even though the figure before him resembled his friend at 16 in almost frightening detail, Harry Potter had been many things, but effeminate wasn't one of them. He reached for the black t-shirt with the insignia of some Muggle band on it and pulled it over his head, and it conformed to his thin body perfectly. Sitting on the listing chair where the clothes had been, he pulled on one clunky cross trainer, then the other. 

"What?' he asked Ron without looking up. Ron took and released a deep breath.

"How do you do that?"

"What?"

"Well, you look like Harry, but...you don't."

"He doesn't want Harry,” he said flatly, tying his shoes. "He wants a gay representation of Harry at 16. So, that's what he's getting." Harry looked up, and the green eyes were piercing. "We did decide that this is what he wants?" Ron nodded. "What's bothering you?"

"You know what's bothering me,” Ron snapped. 

"No, I really don't." Harry stood, shook down his pant legs. 

"You look...soft. Like I could break you in half with my bare hands. How the hell are you planning to defend yourself?" 

A small smile curled the corner of Harry's blackened lips. "As you know better than anyone, looks can be deceiving."

"I don't want you to get hurt,” Ron said quickly in a low voice so that Seamus couldn't hear across the room. 

Harry's eyes darkened. "I don't want to get hurt either, but this is the only way. Besides, it isn't like the other time, Ron. I walked into that one. It was stupid." His face hardened, and for just a moment, Ron could see the real Harry behind the garish mask. "I won't ever be that stupid again."

"You weren't stupid." Ron protested. "You were trying to be decent."

"With people who have absolutely no understanding of the concept,” Harry leaned over, picked up a short leather jacket and shrugged into it. "It doesn't matter. It's almost over now."

"Promise me you won't do anything reckless."

"I have been at this a while, Ron." Harry said archly.

"Yeah, but this one is different. You and I both know it." They exchanged another long look, and Harry stepped in closer to Ron, his voice very soft.

"Relax, Ron." He said gently. "I'll be okay." His green eyes were very level in that achingly young face. It was the face that seemed to throw Ron back in time, and suddenly he felt what they'd both been, once upon a time: inexperienced, and frightened.

"He's going to have his hands on you,” he whispered raggedly.

Harry stared, unfazed. "I know," he said resolutely. "Which is why this has to be me." He lowered his voice further, until it was a breath of sound Seamus could not hear. "He won't be the first man to have his hands on me." One black brow arched sardonically, and Ron's face filled with color.

"This isn't the same, and you know it,” he hissed. Harry lifted his hands and laid them, gently, on the muscular chest. "Don't you compare me..."

"I'm not,” he said soothingly. "I'd never. I just meant that it wouldn't freak me out, where it might a bloke who'd never done it before. And if it stops this, I can stand it for a short time. Okay?"

It took a moment, but the fire in Ron's eyes slowly died.

"Yeah, okay,” he subsided, but he still looked edgy. Harry patted his chest gently before letting his hands drop. "Just...don't try to take him out alone."

"I won't."

"And no cowboy shit, Harry, I mean it."

Harry posed with one hand on a shot out hip. "Do I look like a cowboy?" He said, his voice transforming utterly until it was unrecognizable as he slipped seamlessly into his character for the evening; the flamboyantly gay teenager. "I mean, I might like to be ridden by one. I do like a tight pair of wranglers." The way he crawled into someone else's skin never ceased to amaze, and sometimes disturb, Ron. 

"Oy! Stop that." Ron looked a little green. Harry just grinned cheekily. 

"All set." Seamus called from the corner, and Ron and Harry went to where he was sitting. He had several computer screens set up around him, and in the middle was a hologram of a huge house, floating just above the top of a square black box. 

When Seamus had graduated from Hogwarts, he'd been a passable wizard. Where he had excelled was magical reconnaissance and spying techniques. He'd begun working on bugging and electronic listening devices when he was in school, wiring the showers and the girl's dorm rooms, primarily for laughs. Ron was the one who had seen a real benefit in Seamus' little toys, especially when one he'd planted on Theo Nott had led to one of the biggest Death Eater raids of the war, and had recommended him to the Aurors office. Now Seamus worked primarily with Ron and Harry, especially when they were deep undercover, like now. He gestured to the hologram.

"He's in the library,” he said, pointing to a red dot glowing in a room on the main floor. "There's someone else in the kitchen, and someone in what appears to be a bedroom. I wish we knew who the other two were." Seamus frowned, rubbing his jaw.

"We know who they aren't,” Ron said darkly, shooting a sideways look at Harry. He acknowledged it with a small smirk. 

"Probably servants,” He said softly. "We know he's incapable of taking care of himself."

Seamus leaned over and opened a small case near his feet. "Okay," he said briskly, picking up what looked like a tube of lip gloss, "this will knock out an elephant. Just press here," he showed Harry a small red button on the side, "and it will release a sleeping gas that's effective immediately. If you have to use it, toss it, then cover your mouth and run for it. And this," he handed him what looked like a Muggle ATM card, "is a knife. An ultra-light, wicked sharp one. Press here." 

Harry did, and a vapor seemed to mist above the card for a moment before forming into a completely tangible stiletto type blade. Harry checked the edge with his thumbnail, and found it as advertised. "Impressive, Seamus,” he said softly. The little Irishman grinned. 

"We aim to please. That's harder than titanium." He gestured to the blade with his head. "It'll penetrate bone with enough thrust." His eyes met Harry's for a moment, and there was silent communication in the look. Harry nodded, pressed the card again, and the blade disappeared. He slipped it into his back pocket. "Breathe easy, mate,” he said sincerely. "We'll know right where you are all the time. If it gets rough in there, just press the sensor." He gestured towards his own throat. "That will turn your indicator yellow. Also, there's a listening device sewn into the pocket of your jeans, so we can hear everything." He smirked. "As long as you keep them on."

"That ought to be entertaining,” Harry said dryly, and Seamus smiled grimly. Harry looked at Ron. He took and released a deep breath. "Okay, this is it, then." He looked down at his watch. It read 6:48. "Almost time. Walk me out?" 

Ron nodded. Harry clapped Seamus on the shoulder as he passed, and Seamus gave him a quick thumbs up. 

They left the dim little bedroom in the run-down house and walked through what had once been a kitchen to a door that led to the darkened, overgrown yard beyond. Ron held the door and they stepped out into the night air, and they began to walk slowly toward a hanging gate that had once led to an alley. "You watch yourself,” he said tightly. 

"Yeah."

"Anything starts to go, you press the sensor."

"I know, Ron,” he paused. "I'll be okay."

"Promise me,” he whispered. Harry shook his head. 

"You know I can't," he replied, his voice a breath of sound.

"Take your wand,” Ron persisted, sounding desperate.

"You know I can't do that, either."

"Do it anyway." 

"Ron..."

Ron made a strangled noise in his throat, bent his knees and roughly curled his palm around Harry's slender neck, yanking him into his chest. His eyes tightly closed, he pressed his lips over Harry's and kissed him, hard. For just the briefest of seconds, Harry kissed him back, then turned his face into Ron's hard shoulder, his hands fisted in Ron's robes. They stood there for a moment, straining against one another, then Harry stepped back. "I love you, you git,” he said softly, smoothing the fabric he'd crushed with his hands. 

"I love you, too,” he answered, not caring that Seamus was no doubt listening. "Don't you dare make my sister a widow, or that baby she's carrying an orphan."

"The baby is the reason we have to do this,” Harry said starkly. "Your sister cannot pop out a baby in a month with black hair and green eyes if I'm still dead."

Ron sighed. "Go on. We'll be listening."

"I'll try to keep it PG, then,”  Harry grinned wickedly, then turned and disappeared into the darkness like a wraith. Ron watched him go with his heart in his throat.

 

_THEN_

_March 28th, of this year..._

 

_The day Harry Potter died had begun just like any other day that spring. The weather had been pleasant, the sky blue, the traffic light. He and Ron had grabbed a bite of lunch in Diagon Alley and had gone back to their office at the Ministry, only to find an owl waiting for Harry. He'd unrolled the parchment almost absently, then gone very still._

_Ron, far more intuitive than his wife gave him credit for, at least where Harry was concerned, turned to look into his friend’s face and saw his eyes narrowed as he read the parchment again. "What is it?"_

_"It's from Malfoy,” Harry had answered slowly, and Ron scowled._

_"What the fuck does that birk want?" He asked roughly._

_"He's invited me to meet him for a drink,” Harry said in a bemused manner. "To thank me for testifying for him at his trial last month."_

_Harry hadn't really wanted to testify on Malfoy's behalf. He'd always hated the greasy git with a passion, but when it came right down to it, Harry's innate sense of decency hadn't allowed him to sit idly by while Malfoy was charged with Dumbledore's murder, either. Harry was certain there were lots of things that Malfoy had done during the war, but that murder hadn't been one of them, and he was the only eye witness still around to prove it. When Draco's counselor had called him to the stand, he'd merely told the truth. He re-read the elegant scrawl on the parchment, then folded it, gave the handsome golden tawny a treat from a plate near the window, and sent it on its way._

_"You're not going, are you?" Ron asked, trying to sound nonchalant._

_"Don't know,” Harry said thoughtfully. "Invitation seems straightforward enough. He just wants to buy me a pint, he says. Maybe it's not a bad idea."_

_"What?" Ron gasped. "For Christ's sake, we're talking Malfoy here, Harry. You do remember him, right? The one who did everything in his power to get us thrown out of school, the one whose father has tried to kill you not once, but three times? If you hadn't gotten old Lucius sent to Azkaban, he'd still be after you. And that's another thing; you don't suppose Malfoy has forgiven you for what happened to his father, do you, cause I don't."_

_Harry thought about Lucius Malfoy's fate, and shuddered. He knew what a Dementors Kiss felt like. He hadn't died, but it had been a near thing. He ran his hand through his messy black hair. "You're probably right,” he said softly. "He said if I wanted to come, he'd be at the Leaky at seven. If not, he'd understand."_

_"Don't go, Harry. Just...don't."_

_"You know, he might be able to help us, Ron, if he was of a mind to. There might be all sorts of things that Malfoy knows."_

_"And he'd tell us, ‘cause we're such great mates of his, after all." Ron said dryly._

_"Maybe he really is just grateful that I kept him out of Azkaban." Harry said reasonably._

_"And maybe my Great Aunt Tessie doesn't have an arse the size of Little Whinging, but I wouldn't bet on it."_

_Harry had laughed, and that had seemed the end of the discussion. Ron hadn't thought about it again until nearly midnight that night, when a persistent rapping on the window of his and Hermione's bedroom had wakened him from a deep sleep. Hermione, seven months pregnant with their second child, had poked him hard in the ribs when he sat in the middle of the bed staring around in confusion._

_"The window, Ronald,”she    said sleepily. "I think it's an owl."_

_Ron had opened the window, and the cool air had wafted over his bare chest as the bird had lighted on the sill. Immediately, he recognized Hedwig, and his heart began to pound._

_"What's up, girl?" He'd asked, unaccountably nervous all of a sudden. She held out her leg, and Ron took the parchment from her, then unrolled it and turned so that the street light shown on the writing._

_"What is it?" Hermione asked when she saw his wide eyes and ashen face._

_"It's Harry,” he answered breathlessly. "He's missing."_


	3. Now and Then: Chapter 3

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 7 p.m.

Harry walked down the darkened lane, his gait smooth and his steps sure. He saw the imposing house rising up in the distance, and his eyes hardened as his mouth curled in a sneer. He knew that Ron was nervous about this, but Harry, himself, was more ready then he'd ever been for anything. They'd been planning this for a year; he was prepared for what was coming. After all, he'd already lived through the worst; no one would ever find him unprepared again. He stopped at the massive gates and rang the bell.

"Who is it?" Came a disembodied voice from a pillar to the left of the drive. He answered in the high, affected voice he'd tried out on Ron earlier. 

"Madam Vanguard sent me," he answered with just a boyish touch of hesitation. There was a pause, and the massive gates swung open. He began the long walk up the curving drive. "The old manse looks a little ratty." He said conversationally, knowing that Ron and Seamus could hear him. "Looks like our old friend has maybe gone through his inheritance." 

The yard did look overgrown, and the flagstones beneath his feet were chipped and in need of replacing. He looked up at the house, and noticed that most of it was dark, and that some of the shutters were hanging by a single hinge. If it hadn't been for the lights on the ground floor, the place might almost have looked like the old Riddle place from his dreams during fourth year. Harry narrowed his eyes when he reached the porch. "Here goes nothing, boys," he muttered, and rang the bell. He heard it echo through the massive house like some sort of ornamental gong. It took a few moments, but the door finally creaked open.

Standing there was a skeletal man wearing a butler's uniform. He looked down his long, beak-like nose at Harry, his lip curled in disgust. "Yes." He drawled slowly. "You wanted ...something?"

"Listen, honey," he answered as insolently as he could. "Someone sent for me. I'm not selling girl guide cookies."

The man's eyes narrowed even further, if possible. "Please come in." 

"Thanks, loads." Harry walked past him, moving as smoothly and gracefully as a dancer. He looked around the entryway, which was massive, a great brass chandelier hanging in the dimness far over his head, and a staircase curving to his left up into the darkness of the second floor. "Nice digs," he said, gesturing extravagantly with his hands, sending a flirty look at the old man, who watched him with distaste. "Someone has money."

"That would be the master," he answered.

"Master," Harry grinned. "How very... dominating." He thought he did a creditable impersonation of Rita Skeeter, and could almost hear Ron cringing. The thought made his smile widen. 

"If you'll wait here please?" The butler sneered.

"Whatever," Harry gestured flippantly, his hand waving. The butler looked as if he smelled something unpleasant as he walked off down the dreary hall to his left.

Harry dropped his hands into the pockets of his jacket, curling his right around the tube that Seamus had given him. He doubted that if something went down he'd have the time to use it, but it was reassuringly solid against his palm. He wandered around, staring at a painting that hung over a small table to one side, looking at a vase that was nearly as tall as he was. He noticed that the newel post at the foot of the stairs was of carved oak, with a white marble snake coiled around it. Heavy silver tie backs in the shape of snakes secured weighty green velvet draperies at the windows on either side of the main door, and that even the heavy doorknob, clearly sterling silver, had an elaborate carving of a snake on it. At one time these overt outward displays of the homeowner's connection with the Dark Arts would have bothered Harry; not anymore. Now he just found them hollow, and pretentious. Much like the people who owned this crumbling house. He sighed and rocked back on his heels a bit, growing impatient, when a voice came to him from the hallway behind him. A voice he would know anywhere. 

"Good evening," it said smoothly, and Harry went very still before he slowly turned. "Sorry to keep you wai...." The voice died abruptly, the grey eyes widened, the pale skin blanched even further. "Holy mother of God..." Draco Malfoy breathed, staring at Harry's 16 year-old face. Harry's darkened lips curved into what he knew, was a sexy smile.

"What's the matter, handsome?" he askd softly. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

 

_THEN_

_March 28th, later that same night_

 

_By the time Ron arrived at Harry and Ginny's, the house was ablaze with lights. He walked briskly up the walk to the front door, and opened it without knocking, only to find himself on the business end of Mad Eye Moody's wand._

_"For God's sake, Moody," Tonks said harshly, batting his arm, "It's Ron! Put that damn thing away before you hurt someone."_

_Moody pocketed his wand, muttering something about ‘you can't be too careful', and Ron pushed past him. Ginny was seated on the small sofa in the living room wearing her pink bathrobe, her bright red hair in a ponytail on the top of her head. She wasn't wearing any makeup, and she looked tired, and worried. Remus was talking to her quietly._

_"I don't know, Remus," she was saying. "His note just said that he was meeting someone for a quick drink, and then he'd be home. But, that was hours ago."_

_"Son of a bitch!" Ron blurted, his hands going to his hair. "I told him not to go!"_

_"Where?" Ginny asked desperately._

_"The Leaky." Ron answered, shaking his head._

_"Do you know who he was meeting?" Remus asked. Ron glanced at Ginny, then back at Remus's worn, worried face._

_"Can we take this outside, Remus?"_

_"No, you can't take it outside," Ginny growled angrily. "He's my husband, Ronald, and if you know something, you will tell me now," she paused, her eyes filling. "Is he meeting another woman?"_

_"No!" Ron exploded, then realized that, that was probably exactly how it had sounded to his sister when he'd asked Remus to step outside. "No, Gin. Harry would never do that. No. It's not a woman." He sighed and ran his hand through his tousled ginger hair. Which was worse? For Ginny to think her husband was cheating on her, or that he'd probably done something really dangerous? Well, there was no help for it now. "We got an owl at work this afternoon... from Malfoy."_

_"Malfoy?" Remus sputtered. What little color there had been in Ginny's face faded, and she wove on her feet._

_"Malfoy?" she gasped._

_"Easy, Gin," Ron said, grabbing her arm and sitting her on the couch gently._

_"He didn't do that," she shook her head._

_"What did he want?" Tonks asked, fully as disbelieving as Ginny._

_"He said he wanted to buy Harry a pint, just to thank him for his testimony at his hearing, you know," Ron shrugged helplessly._

_"He can't have believed it was a good idea," Remus said. "Malfoy hates him; he always has."_

_"Harry thought Malfoy might have information," Ron said defensively. "That now that his family's gone, he might be willing to cooperate."_

_"But to go alone," Tonks wheezed._

_"Well, sitting here isn't doing us any good," Moody said forcefully. "Remus, let's you and I have a chat with Tom at the Leaky Cauldron. Ron and Tonks, check with your other friends. Maybe he met up with someone else and just lost track of time. Ginny, I..."_

_But, he was cut off when Ginny let out a startled cry and rushed to the fireplace. They all moved closer when they saw Arthur Weasley's head sitting in the flames._

_"Dad!" Ginny cried. It was nearly two in the morning; this couldn't be good news. This seemed borne out by Arthur's serious expression._

_"Ginny, is your brother there?"_

_"Yeah, dad," Ron answered, kneeling next to Ginny on the floor. "I'm here."_

_"Ron, you need to bring your sister to St. Mungo's," Arthur said somberly. "Sweetheart," he turned his eyes to Ginny, and they looked infinitely weary. "Harry was found in a Muggle park about an hour ago." Ginny's hands went to her mouth. "They're doing everything they can, love, but I won't lie to you. He's in a bad way."_

_"Oh, God," Ginny lurched to her feet and ran to her bedroom to dress._

_Ron moved closer to the flames. "What happened, Dad?" He asked, his heart pounding._

_"I don't have details. He was assaulted; that's all I know," Arthur sighed heavily. "They sent word to us, thinking it would be better coming from me. Get her there quickly, Ron. Healer Smithwyck didn't say how bad he was, but he wasn't encouraging. Your mum and I will meet you there." With a soft pop, Arthur's head was gone._

_"Sweet Jesus," Ron muttered, sitting heavily, staring._

_"Ron," Remus said, kneeling beside him. "Moody and I will go see what we can find out from Tom, and then we'll meet you there."_

_"Yeah, okay," he said faintly._

_"And I'll go tell Hermione, then sit with the baby so that she can come, yes?" Tonks offered._

_"Yeah, that'd be good."_

_Ginny came out of the bedroom wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and a terrified expression and walked to her brother._

_"Ron," she said, reaching out. He stood and took her hands. They were freezing._

_"It'll be okay, Gin," he offered softly. "He's been through worse than this." She nodded, but neither of them seemed convinced. He turned to the others, not sure what to say._

_"Just go!" Remus said emphatically._

_Ron nodded, and he and Ginny disappeared with a pop._


	4. Now and Then: Chapter 4

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 7:05 p.m.

Harry stood staring at Draco Malfoy, surprised he was so calm. He wasn't sure what he had expected to feel when he finally saw him again, but it certainly hadn't been this detachment. He supposed he had Hermione to thank for that.

Malfoy, on the other hand, didn't look calm at all. He looked completely and utterly gobsmacked, and Harry's grin widened.

"Like what you see?" he asked softly.

Malfoy took two lurching steps, then seemed to remember himself, and straightened. Harry could almost see his thought processes as he fought for control. He was Lord of the Manor, after all. But, Harry thought with a little spurt of vengeful satisfaction, he wasn't holding up any better than his house. He was thinner than Harry had ever seen him, his face sallow and gaunt. He was wearing his hair long, like his father had, and Harry was fairly certain that the black velvet robe he was wearing, with the silver snake clasps, had belonged to Lucius as well. But, where Lucius had always seemed almost omnipotent in his lethal elegance, Draco seemed too thin, too pale. Too unwell. His eyes looked slightly sunken and there were dark shadows beneath them, and his cheeks were hollow. He came to Harry slowly, those grey eyes almost feral as he studied Harry's face.

"How old are you?" he asked hoarsely.

"Old enough," Harry answered flippantly. Draco reached out and caught his chin, his hand hard.

"How old?" he insisted.

"No need to play rough, hon," Harry said soothingly, wrapping his thin fingers around Draco's wrist and stroking his pulse point with his thumb. "I'm supposed to lie and tell you that I'm 17, but, you can keep a secret, right?" Draco nodded. "I won't be 17 until August," he whispered, looking up at Malfoy coyly through his thick black lashes. "You won't tell, will you?" Malfoy shook his head, staring still at Harry's face, lifting a trembling hand to touch his cheek gently.

"My God, you're beautiful," he whispered. Harry curved his lips and reached up to slide his slight hand through Draco's long hair. In this body, Draco was a good six inches taller than Harry. He stroked the straight blonde strands softly.

"I love your hair," he breathed, then let his fingers touch Draco's pale face before sliding down to caress the lowest silver snake clasp on the velvet robe; the one right above Malfoy's pubic bone. "And the snakes. Very sexy."

"You like snakes?" Malfoy asked, staring at Harry's mouth, sounding a bit breathless. Deliberately, Harry flicked out his tongue and dampened his lower lip. 

"Doesn't everybody?" 

Malfoy smiled slowly, then leaned forward and pressed his face against the side of Harry's neck and inhaled delicately. Harry had been very careful, using scent free shampoo and soap, knowing instinctively that Malfoy would not want cloying colognes. He opened his mouth, and Harry felt his tongue touch his skin. "You smell divine," he breathed against Harry's skin. "Ripe. Young."

Harry reached around and cupped the back of his head, his fingers sifting through the pale, silky hair. "Want to suck my blood?" he quipped lightly. He gasped a little involuntarily when he felt Malfoy's teeth skim the artery beneath his chin. Time to put some emotional distance here already, apparently.

"Maybe later," he chuckled, leaning back, his eyes feverishly bright. "For now, would you care for something else to drink?"

"Sure. I'm up for anything," Harry answered slyly. Malfoy smiled wickedly and took his hand. 

"I'm counting on that." 

He pulled him toward a set of double doors, and Harry couldn't help a small smile, thinking that Ron and Seamus must be retching. 

 

_THEN_

_March 28th, 3:07 a.m._

 

_There were moments that stood out in absolute clarity in Ron Weasley's mind; years later the details would be as painfully clear as they had been in the beginning. He knew that as long as he lived, the moment that he and Ginny arrived in the hallway at St. Mungo's was one of those moments. Somehow, they'd apparated right were the needed to be, in the emergency wing. Hermione was already there somehow, standing outside a set of doors, and when she turned, her pale, drawn face told them volumes._

_"How did you get here so fast?" Ron asked. "Is Tonks with Molly?"_

_Hermione frowned. "Tonks? No. I took her to Mother as soon as Shacklebolt flooed me."_

_"Shacklebolt? What's he to do with this?" Ron asked, thinking of his stern faced boss._

_"He found him. They were trying to get a hold of you. I knew you'd come here." She came to Ginny and pulled her into her arms. It was an awkward hug; Hermione's large pregnant belly kept them from being able to get too close._

_"Have you heard anything yet?" Ginny asked desperately._

_"Only that he's hanging in there." Hermione answered. "Smithwyck should be out soon."_

_"Is Shacklebolt here?" Ron asked, thinking he might be able to get more information from his department head, but Hermione shook her head._

_"No, he said he'd be along later."_

_"What's wrong with him?" Ginny asked Hermione, who merely shook her head sadly._

_"I wish I could tell you, sweetheart," she said gently, stroking Ginny's hair. "Shacklebolt only said he'd been assaulted. That's all I know."_

_"That's what Dad said, too." Ron said faintly, staring at the white doors that read "Serious Injuries of a Non-Magical Nature". That sounded so much more ominous than a magical injury, for some reason. Healers knew what to do with magical injuries; would they be expert enough for this, whatever it was?_

_His musings didn't get much further, because the door opened and he recognized healer Smithwyck, the man who had taken care of his father in their fifth year when he'd been attacked by Voldemort's snake. He looked at the three of them, and smiled faintly, and the fist that had been squeezing Ron's heart relaxed, just a little._

_"It was touch and go there for a while, and he isn't completely out of danger, but I believe he's going to recover."_

_Ginny burst into tears and Hermione held her gently as tears filled her eyes as well._

_"What happened?" Ron asked while the women hugged and wept._

_"He was assaulted," Smithwyck said carefully. "Beaten rather badly; his throat was cut." There was something else, Ron could sense it, but the man said nothing further._

_Ginny cried out, her hand going to her mouth. He touched her arm. "It was badly done." The healer said gently. "They missed the carotid artery completely. He probably won't even have a scar." He looked bemused. "And he doesn't look nearly as odd now as he did an hour ago."_

_"What does that mean?" Ron asked. Smithwyck's eyes were on Ginny's._

_"Your husband doesn't happen to be a metamorphmagus, does he?"_

_Ginny swallowed and glanced at Ron, then nodded. "He is, but it isn't for public consumption."_

_"Yes. He's an Auror, I believe?" Ginny nodded again._

_"What does that have to do with anything?" Ron persisted._

_"Just that I understand the secretive nature of his work, and why that particular... ability... might be better left undisclosed. When they brought him in, forgive me if this is indelicate, but he was naked," Hermione gasped, "and, someone had shaved his entire body."_

_Ron felt a wave of alarm make his skin tingle. "What? Everything?"_

_Smithwyck nodded. "Head, face, legs, chest, underarms; everything."_

_Ron swallowed. "Everything?" he asked faintly._

_"Yes, Mr. Weasley," Smithwyck said ironically. "Everything. However, it all seems to have grown back once we stabilized his other injuries. Hence my conviction that he was a metamorphmagus."_

_"Why in hell would someone do that?"_

_"You can't think of a reason?" Hermione said, looking at Ron meaningfully._

_"No," He answered, at a loss._

_"Ronald," she put her hands on her hips, "you can't think of a single reason why someone would want to shave off all of Harry Potter's hair?"_

_"No," Ron began, "It's weird. It's..." And then he paused, and his blue eyes went very wide, and he and Hermione exchanged a long, knowing look._

_"I don't care about any of that," Ginny said, dashing at the tears on her face. "I just want to see him. May I, please?"_

_"Certainly, Mrs. Potter. I should tell you that we gave him something for pain, so he isn't conscious."_

_"I don't care. Just, please..."_

_The healer opened the door at his back, and Ginny burst through with Hermione right behind her. Ron started to follow, but Smithwyck put a staying hand on his arm. "Mr. Weasley, a moment, if you please?"_

_Ron frowned, glanced through the door and saw Ginny and Hermione leaning over a still figure in a narrow bed, then followed the healer to a room across the hall. They entered, and Ron saw that it was an examining room. Smithwyck closed the door after them and sat on the edge of the sterile white cot, and sighed wearily, his hand going through his wispy white hair. Ron felt a sudden surge of alarm at the look on his careworn face. Finally, the older man lifted kind brown eyes._

_"You're his best friend, aren't you?" He asked. Ron was taken aback for a moment._

_"Yeah… have been for twelve years."_

_"He's going to need you," The old man shook his head. "There isn't any easy way to say this. Whoever did this did more than shaved his body and attempted to cut his throat." Ron swallowed, his hands fisting at his sides. "He had a rather...creative cocktail of Muggle drugs in his system. I don't know the names; we don't use them. I can only tell you what they do."_

_"What?" Ron asked warily._

_"Well, one causes symptoms similar to euphoric spells, one causes temporary amnesia, and one, I believe, is used to treat Muggle men who have trouble sustaining an erection, which certainly shouldn't be a problem for someone Mr. Potter's age." Ron felt heat fill his face. "However, I don't believe he took any of the drugs willingly."_

_Ron took a deep breath. "What makes you think that?"_

_"He had ligature marks on his wrists and ankles, indicating he'd been tied up," he paused, looking pained. "And he'd been sexually assaulted."_

_All of the blood that had flooded to Ron's face left it in a dizzying rush, and he staggered a bit. "He... what?" he wheezed, blinking quickly._

_"Well, to put it bluntly," the old man grimaced, "he was raped. Viciously, and repeatedly."_

_Ron felt as if he might be sick. He bent at the waist, his hands clutching his knees, and fought for air. Suddenly there were gentle hands on his shoulders, and he was being eased down into a chair. He bent forward, his face in his hands._

_"Sweet Jesus," he gasped. "Who? Why?" Ron struggled to get out._

_"I can't tell you," The old healer said wearily. "I can only tell you it seemed... personal. It was so violent. He was significantly injured, inside and out," Ron groaned into his hands. "And the drugs they gave him ensured his cooperation, if not his active participation, completely against his will. In doses that could have made his heart explode." Ron made an injured sound in the back of his throat. "Whoever did this wanted to hurt and humiliate him before they killed him. I'm the only one who is aware of those injuries, although I think your superior in the Auror's office may have an idea that he was... assaulted. I was able to repair the physical injuries, Mr. Weasley, but the psychological ones are, I'm afraid, out of my depth. They are no doubt going to cause far more long-term damage than the tears and abrasions, but he's going to have to face this, eventually." He shook his head. "I don't know Mr. Potter, other than by reputation, so I wasn't sure just exactly how much he'd want his wife to know."_

_"I don't, either," Ron said weakly, staring. How was he supposed to handle this? What was he supposed to do? Oh, Harry, his heart ached. Why?_

_"He can decide when he wakes up. Sometimes, victims who've been given this particular combination of drugs don't remember anything at all. We've already tested him for anything that might have been sexually transmitted, and he seems to have dodged that hex, at least."_

_"You can tell already?" Ron asked shakily._

_"Oh, yes," The old man grimaced. "We aren't immune to this sort of thing in the wizard world, and we've become very good at recognizing blood borne illnesses. They leave a distinctive mark on the aura, almost instantly."_

_Ron just shook his head, unable to process any of the technical talk. All he knew was that his heart was breaking. "I don't know what to do," he said faintly, his eyes pleading with the healer. "What do I do?"_

_"Be there for him," he said gently. "Get him help, if and when he needs it. It might be very beneficial that your wife is such a talented Unspeakable."_

_How Smithwyck knew that, Ron didn't know, but he couldn't think about that now. "I... need to go and be with him, and my sister."_

_"Of course," Smithwyck stood and opened the door. "I'm sorry to burden you with this, but I was fairly certain you were the one he'd want to have told." Ron nodded. "I'll be in, in a while to check on him."_

_Ron nodded again, then walked dazedly out of the door and across the hall. He paused with his hand on the doorknob, staring at it for a long moment. What should he do? Should he tell Hermione, or Ginny? Or should he just follow Harry's lead. Maybe they'd all be lucky, and he wouldn't remember any of it, except that Ron wanted him to remember, if only so that he could punish whoever had done this. Rage rose up, nearly choking him. Personal? The bastard's thought that was personal? They'd know what personal was when he was through with them. Taking a deep, steadying breath, he opened the door._


	5. Now and Then: Chapter 5

October 30th, 7:15 p.m.

 

Harry watched Draco pour two glasses of red wine, his long, pale fingers graceful as he lifted a glass and held it out to him. "Do you like red wine?" He asked with a slight smile.

"I like anything with a kick," Harry answered, taking the glass, intentionally brushing Malfoy's fingers as he did so. Perversely, he enjoyed the small shudder he saw pass up the slender blonde's arm. He took a sip, then set the glass on a small table in the formal sitting room and started to shrug out of his jacket, then paused. "May I?"

"Please,” Malfoy said expansively, gesturing gracefully with his hand. "Make yourself at home."

Harry shrugged out of the leather jacket and dropped it over a chair, reclaiming his glass, aware of Malfoy's predatory stare on his slender body. He stood suggestively, his hips forward, and spread one hand on his own flat stomach as he retrieved his wine. He glanced over from beneath his lashes, and saw that Malfoy was posing, as well, reclining in a large wing-backed chair, his shoulders in one corner; one long, slender leg hooked over the arm. The room was artfully lit to hide the dissipation on his face, and the sheet of pale silvery hair glimmered in the candlelight. He tossed it languidly over his shoulder with a negligent flick of his wrist, and lifted his glass to his full lips, watching Harry as he took a slow sip. It was all very theatrical and indolent, and Harry supposed, on some level, sexy. Fortunately, he was immune.

He sipped his own wine and surveyed the room casually. "So," he said finally, "the house…it's yours?"

"Every last crumbling inch," Malfoy responded dryly. "Daddy dearest left it to me when he cocked up his toes."

"Nice for you,” Harry turned a small, ornate chair that had been facing a delicate Queen Anne desk and placed it with it's upholstered back facing Malfoy, then slowly straddled it, spreading his legs wide. ‘Two can play this game, pal.' He thought, and leaned on the back. He saw Malfoy's eyes dart to the black denim stretched taut over his groin before they lifted back to his face.

"What?" Draco asked, taking a deep breath. "No old man to leave you a family fortune?" One aristocratic blond brow arched, and Harry snorted.

"Hardly. My darling Da has already made it abundantly clear that I'm on my own,” he smirked. "He and mum don't approve of my lifestyle, and my career choices."

Draco propped his elbow on his knee, let the wine glass dangle from his long fingers. "So, they booted you out?"

"Like the neighbor’s cat," Harry saluted him with the glass and took another sip. 

"They have money," Malfoy stated flatly, searching Harry's slender, pale face. "Don't they?"

"What makes you think that?" Harry asked smoothly, but manufacturing some wariness in his green eyes.

"Well, let's see," The blonde said slowly. "You're certainly not a street kid. You do your little ‘girlfriend' routine," he moved his head and waved a wrist limply, "but under it, you speak beautifully. You have gorgeous teeth, so that's either genetic or cost someone a fortune. And you move like an aristocrat. I'm guessing, expensive boarding schools and designer threads, until fairly recently."

Harry allowed himself to appear impressed. "You're very observant,” he said softly. He was pleased; it was exactly the character he had wanted to create.

"It takes one to know one,” Malfoy said and he lifted his glass. "To the beautiful, idle children of the very rich,” Harry smiled slowly.

"Cheers,” They both drank. 

"So," Malfoy asked, "how did Madam Vanguard find you?"

"Actually, I found her." Harry leaned his elbows on the top of the little chair, turning the wine glass between his palms.

"And why was that?"

"Even the beautiful, idle children of the very rich have to eat once Daddy's cut off the trust fund. I'm not really suited to a career in business," he grinned cheekily, an expression that Draco clearly found charming, for his own lips curled in response, "and after ten years in boy's boarding schools, I have it on extremely good authority that I'm an excellent fuck."

Draco's eyes glittered even as he tsked. "Language, darling,” he drawled.

"So sorry,” Harry returned in the same bored tone. "Anyway, a friend of mine told me about Madam Vanguard, and I went to see her. She, in turn, offered me a career doing something I'm particularly good at." He took a sip of wine, his eyes sparkling over the rim of the glass. "I can give you the name of my last history professor, if you'd care for a reference."

Draco laughed. "Naughty boy." He set his wine glass down and held out his hand. "Come here."

Harry stood slowly, affecting a languid, indolent grace as he set his own glass on the desk and crossed to where Malfoy was reclining, taking the offered hand. The blonde pulled gently, and Harry straddled his thighs brazenly as he lowed himself.

"Not shy,” Malfoy murmured.

"You're not paying me to be shy,” Harry responded, running his pale hands up the man's velvet covered chest.

Malfoy curled one cool hand around Harry's nape and pulled him in, staring at his lips. 

"Kiss me,” he whispered. One of Harry's dark brows arched. This was different. He'd assumed that Malfoy would want to be the one in charge, but here he seemed to be asking the kid to take control. Divorcing himself from the actions of the body he was inhabiting and his own feelings, Harry reached up and sank his fingers into Malfoy's long hair, pulling him forward slightly roughly, and slanted his mouth over the full, soft lips. He kissed him slowly, with just enough force to be faintly dominating, slipping in a hint of tongue. He was aggressive, but not threatening. With almost clinical detachment, he felt Malfoy's hands drop to his ass, then pull him forward until his groin was against the taller man's. Sinuously, he rolled his hips forward and then back, and Malfoy moaned softly into his mouth. When their lips parted, the blonde rested his forehead against Harry's chin, his eyes closed. 

"Very nice,” he breathed. "I don't believe I'll be needing the name of that History prof, after all." Looking over the top of his head, Harry let the grim satisfaction he felt enter his eyes for just a moment. "What's your name, love?"

He leaned back, the coldness gone as he looked down at Malfoy with a slight smile. "Trenton." He answered. 

"Trenton, what?"

Harry shook his head. "No last names,” he breathed, touching Malfoy's face with delicate fingers. Malfoy rested his head back against the wing of the big chair and stared into the boys green eyes, softening under the gentle exploration of his slender fingers.

"So tell me, Trenton ‘no last name'," Malfoy said softly, "do you ever go out without the war paint?" He smoothed a pale, languid hand over Harry's chest.

"I was under the impression you'd specifically requested the ‘war paint',” Harry answered, smiling slyly when Malfoy's hand slipped under the shirt to caress his skin.

"I think I might like to see you without it,” he said pensively, stroking soft, pale flesh with his thumb.

"I imagine that could be arranged,” Harry answered, slipping his own fingers into the long white blonde hair and skimming through the length, pulling it over Malfoy's shoulder and smoothing it over the black velvet. "So, what am I supposed to call you, gorgeous? Lord of the Manor? Master of all he surveys?"

Malfoy's lips quirked in amusement. "Draco."

"Mmmm, I like it,” Harry said, his eyes reflecting a heat he didn't feel when Malfoy's thumbnail gently raked his nipple. "It suits you." The body responded instinctively, the small nub hardening. Malfoy grinned. 

The sound of a throat clearing caught their attention, and they looked up to see the butler standing in the doorway, looking everywhere but at his employer, sprawled in a chair with a teenage boy straddling his lap, his hand under the boy's shirt. "Dinner is served, sir."

"Thank you, Grimes,” Draco drawled, and the butler quickly left.

"I don't think he approves,” Harry murmured in amusement. Malfoy sighed melodramatically.

"No, I don't imagine he does." 

"Perhaps you should offer to have that stick surgically removed from his ass," Harry offered lightly, and Draco laughed in delight.

Down the road, in the ramshackle row house, Seamus Finnegan shook his head, listening to the laughter.

"You know, we've done these surveillances dozens of times, and he never ceases to amaze me, the way he just becomes someone else. Male, female, gay, straight. How does he do it?"

"I don't know,” Ron answered, shaking his ginger hair out of his eyes. "I really don't."

"I'd have thought this one would gag him,” the little Irishman said in distaste.

"Oh, it does,”  Ron said emphatically. "You just have to remember that he's very good at what he does."

"Well, he's one cold-blooded bastard, that's for sure." Seamus shook his head. "When did he turn into that?"

Ron just shrugged. He didn't answer, but he knew. He knew the exact day, time and where it had happened. 

 

_THEN_

_March 28th, just before dawn_

 

_Ron watched Harry's face anxiously as Hermione and Ginny talked softly. He was so bloody pale, as white as the starched white linens beneath his head. It made his hair look like spilled ink, made the red line that crossed his throat look particularly angry. Every time Ron looked at that vivid mark, rage bubbled up inside of him, thick and hot, like acid._

_"Well, obviously, it's for polyjuice potion." Hermione was saying, absently rubbing her swollen belly. She looked exhausted, and Ron reached over and took her hand in his._

_"Go home, love,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips and gently kissing the back of it. "You look completely knackered."_

_She shook her head, her tired eyes going to Harry's face. "Not until he wakes up,” she said, her other hand going out to rest on his arm. "Not until I know he's okay." There was a long silence while her fingers idly stroked his skin. "It's got to be polyjuice potion," she mused softly, "it’s the only explanation."_

_"Maybe they're just twisted fucks who got off on removing it,”Ron said harshly. "If it was bloody Malfoy and his goons, it could just as easily be that." Even saying the name made him feel as if he might vomit._

_"I don't think so,” his wife said softly. "I'd be willing to bet it was about his hair."_

_‘Not entirely', Ron thought, then had to blink away a quick wash of tears._

_"Although," Hermione went on, "if they wanted it for the potion, they're going to be frustrated by some of it."_

_"Why?" Ginny asked, sitting across from them on the other side of Harry's still form and holding his hand. She was idly stroking the angry ligature mark on his wrist with her other hand._

_"Because polyjuice potion only works with hair from the head,” Hermione answered emphatically. "The spell is very specific." And of all people, she would know._

_Ginny sighed. "But why would someone want to impersonate Harry?" She shook her head. "To what purpose?"_

_Ron and Hermione exchanged a long, dark look. "Ginny," Hermione said softly, "your husband has a lot of enemies, and a famous face. They'd do it to discredit him, or humiliate him. They'd do it to get him thrown out of the Auror program. To see him committing murder, with witnesses." Ginny blanched, her eyes very wide. "There are lots of reasons, none of them good."_

_"That isn't it."_

_The voice was rough, thick sounding, and so unlike his usual voice that it took them all a moment to realize that it was Harry who had spoken. Eyes shot to his face, and his were open, startlingly green against his pallor, oddly vulnerable without his glasses in front of them._

_The two women cried out. Ginny threw herself across his chest, her arms going around his neck and she sobbed into his throat. "Oh, baby,” she cried. He slowly wrapped his arms around her and held her._

_"Harry,” Hermione said, standing near his head. He looked up into her tear filled eyes._

_"I'm okay, ‘Mione,” he whispered roughly._

_"Hey, mate." Ron forced out around the lump in his throat, and rested his hand on the top of Harry's thick, messy hair. Harry looked up at him, and it took everything Ron had not to turn from the raw despair he saw in those green eyes. His heart sank. Harry remembered. Everything._

_"How much do they know?"_

_Harry was sitting, leaning against the head of the bed, bare to the waist where the white sheets had pooled. Ron tried not to notice the dark marks on his chest and his neck. Hermione had gone home, utterly spent, and Ginny had gone for a cup of coffee. It was the first time they'd been alone since he had regained consciousness. Now he stared at Ron, unblinking._

_"Not much,” Ron responded, not pretending that he didn't understand what Harry was actually asking him. They'd known each other far too long and had been through too much together for those kinds of games. "Smithwyck told them that you'd been beaten, shaved and that someone had done a really lousy job of attempting to cut your throat. That was it."_

_"He told you the rest,” It wasn't a question. Ron nodded mutely and Harry closed his eyes for a moment._

_"If you need... anything ..." Ron began. Harry held up his hand to cut him off and Ron saw that it was shaking._

_"Does anyone else know?"_

_"Smithwyck thought Shacklebolt might have an idea. He found you."_

_Harry winced, looking away. "Fuck."_

_"He won't say anything, mate."_

_"No, but he might... think of me different." A muscle jerked spasmodically in the side of Harry's jaw. Ron reached out and curled his hand around Harry's wrist. Harry stiffened, but didn't pull away._

_"No one will think differently of you."_

_Harry's eyes came back to Ron's, filled with fury. "Are you going to tell me that_ **_you_ ** _don't?" He hissed. Ron recoiled as if he'd slapped him._

_"You can even_ **_ask_ ** _me that?" Ron wheezed, profoundly hurt. "After everything we've been through, you'd even_ **_think_ ** _that? For God's sake, Harry. This wasn't your fault."_

_Harry's anger drained away, but the pain on his face was worse, somehow. "But it was, Ron.” he whispered harshly. "You told me not to go. I didn't listen."_

_"It was Malfoy, then," Ron hissed, nostrils flaring. Harry nodded. "I'm going to filet that nasty bastard, I swear it."_

_"It wasn't just him. It was Crabbe and Goyle, too."_

_"Son of a bitch,” Ron leaned his head forward, feeling sick. "God, Harry..." There was silence for a long moment. "We can get them," Harry slowly shook his head. "What?" Ron exploded. "Why not?"_

_"There won't be any corroborating evidence, just my word against theirs."_

_"What the bloody fuck are you talking about?" Ron frowned. "You were in the Leaky Cauldron. Someone had to see you."_

_"I was in the Leaky Cauldron, having a drink with Malfoy. Crabbe and Goyle weren't there. And two dozen people saw me. They also saw us chat very amiably for half an hour,they saw Malfoy shake my fucking hand and leave. Alone. I sat there talking to Tom at the bar for fully another thirty minutes. Malfoy was long gone by the time I left the bar."_

_"But, how...?"_

_"I got hit with an Imperius as I left. I felt it, but I'd had just enough to drink that I couldn't fight it. And the son of a bitch knew it, because he'd ordered the drinks,” he closed his eyes, his jaw working, his hands fisting. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." He bumped his fist against his forehead with each word. "I know better. All my training told me... and I ignored it."_

_Ron didn't say anything to that; he couldn't. He happened to agree that it had been almost criminally foolish. But, it had also been just like him. Leave it to Harry to give even his worst enemy the benefit of the doubt. The silly sod had even been able to sympathize with Voldemort, on some level._

_"What did Malfoy say?" Ron asked softly. Harry snorted bitterly._

_"Oh, all of the right things to get me to lower my guard,” he said with self’derision. "He'd had a change of heart, there were things he could tell us about the remaining Death Eaters, he wanted to put the past behind him. Christ! And I bought it all, sitting there like a landed trout. Here I was even going to gloat a bit, do a big ‘I told you so' when I brought him in to be interviewed. I was so bloody pleased with myself. Jesus." He bit his lip, and Ron felt his heart tear when Harry's eyes filled. He blinked quickly, shaking his head. "No. They don't get that." He said more to himself than to Ron. "I won't lose it. They can't make me do that."_

_"Do you remember...?" Ron paused. "Do you know why they wanted your hair?"_

_Harry took a steadying breath. "Hermione was right about the polyjuice potion. I know that much,” Harry rubbed his forehead wearily, then raked his hand through his hair. "I don't remember all of it... there are these weird... holes... like time went by, but I wasn't aware of it..."_

_‘Good.' Ron thought._

_"...but I remember hearing Goyle say something about Malfoy's being able to ‘have this little party with Potter even after he's dead, over and over again'."_ __

_"Christ." Ron gasped, nauseated._

_"Malfoy's fucked in the head, mate,” Harry shuddered. "Seriously fucked in the head... and the drugs that they're using..." He trailed off, beginning to tremble slightly, then his expression hardened as he fought for control. "They make it worse. Everything about them that's bad or sick or twisted; it's amplified somehow. Crabbe and Goyle are brutal and sadistic, but Malfoy... Malfoy is.... insane. And he hates me."_

_"You knew he hated you."_

_The look he sent Ron was filled with remembered horror. "Not like that."_

_Ron sat back heavily. "Then you aren't safe. When they find out you didn't die..."_

_Their eyes met, and held. Slowly, Ron's narrowed._

_"What if they don't find out?" he asked, just a breath of sound._

_"What?" Harry frowned. Ron leaned forward._

_"No, really. This might work,” he paused. "Okay, we know Malfoy is planning to use your hair to make polyjuice potion. Goyle said something about doing what they did last night again. What does that sound like to you?"_

_Harry's eyes clouded. "At the time, it sounded like they planned to kill me, over and over again, but I was kind of out of it. Besides, how..." Horror dawned slowly on Harry's pale face. "Sweet Jesus. You don't think..."_

_"That they plan to kidnap some unsuspecting bastards and force that shit on them so that they can play a recurring game of ‘kill Potter'? Yeah, I do." Harry looked sick. "And if they find out that you didn't die, you aren't safe. And neither is Ginny."_

_If possible, Harry blanched further._

_"They'll know that you know it was them. They weren't careful about hiding their identities, because they expected you to die. They're just crazy enough to come after you at home, and you know she'd rather die than let them take you. Maybe..."_

_Harry stared at him, comprehending. "Maybe, I should stay dead,” he breathed. Ron's hand tightened on his arm._

_"You're the best undercover man in the Ministry, and we're the best team. Between us, we can figure out what the son-of-a-bitch is doing, and we can stop it. If he thinks you're dead, he's going to get careless; you know it. It's that innate arrogance. And fortunately," Ron paused, looking over his shoulder to make certain that they were completely alone before his eyes came back to his best friend, "he doesn't know it, but you can be anybody."_

_They stared at one another for a long time, then Harry slowly nodded._

_As far as the wizarding world knew, that night 23 year-old Harry Potter died after being brutally mugged and beaten in a Muggle park. There were no suspects, and it was assumed it was done by non-magical criminals; a tragic case of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time._

_Harry Potter died. And Breckin Donnelly was born_.


	6. Now and Then: Chapter 6

__NOW__

October 30th, 7:45 p.m.

 

The meal was plentiful if not particularly sumptuous, but Harry ate sparingly, and carefully. He ate nothing that wasn't taken from a platter from which Malfoy was also being served, and he put nothing in his mouth that Malfoy didn't sample first. If Malfoy noticed he wasn't eating much, he didn't comment. After all, he was picking at his food as well, as if eating were more of a habit than a necessity. Harry found himself wondering if Malfoy's gaunt appearance didn't have something to do with the drugs they knew he was routinely using now: Cocaine, methamphetamines, ecstasy. The vague trembling in Draco's hands was a dead give-away, and even though his mannerisms were still languid and lazy, he seemed edgy, wired. 

He watched Harry carefully throughout the meal, and Harry made sure his manners were impeccable. After all, he needed to perpetuate Malfoy's belief that he was a poor little rich kid fallen on hard times. He was careful to place his silver linen napkin across his lap, kept his elbows off the table, and used the right forks. Sipped his wine delicately rather than drain it. The only time he did anything that might be considered untoward, was when they were eating their shrimp cocktails, and he made sure that Malfoy was watching him before he took a celery stalk in his mouth and cleaned the sauce from it with his tongue before sucking on it suggestively. He saw Malfoy's eyes darken.

"You like celery?" He asked, one brow arched.

"Not particularly," Harry answered slyly before laying the vegetable aside. Malfoy just chuckled and shook his head. 

"You're incorrigible."

"So I've been told."

The second course was soup, the third beef. Then there was fish, and finally, a fruit and cheese platter. The wine was refilled often, and Malfoy drank a great deal. To his eyes, Harry was keeping up with him, when in fact, Harry had become extremely proficient at non-verbal spells and was draining his glass gradually when Malfoy wasn't looking. The blonde had selected a ripe strawberry from his plate, looked at it for a moment, then turned to Harry.

"Come here, love." He smiled slowly. Harry glanced up at Grimes, who was standing stiffly by the doors, then shrugged as he stood up and made his way around the table to Malfoy. He pushed his chair back and patted his knee. Without hesitating, Harry sat on his leg and leaned into his side. "Care for fruit?"

"Depends on the kind." He smiled when Draco stroked his cheek with the ripe red berry. Draco smirked.

"Strawberries?"

Harry's shrug was non-committal, but he didn't pull away when Malfoy rubbed the fruit across his lips. "Take a bite," he ordered softly. Harry's eyes glittered.

"Of the fruit?"

"For now, brat," he answered fondly.

He sank his white teeth into the berry and chewed. It was sweet, and juicy, and some dribbled down his chin. Malfoy leaned forward and slowly followed the trail of red juice with his tongue from his chin to his soft lips.

"Sir, may I be excused?" Grimes asked, sounding slightly suffocated.

"No, I don't think so, Grimes," Malfoy answered, offering the fruit to Harry again. He took another bite, intentionally getting more of it on his face. "Messy infant," Malfoy smiled, before licking around his mouth lasciviously. He placed the rest of the berry between his teeth, and Harry leaned forward and took a bite of it, catching Malfoy's lower lip at the same time, pulling on it gently. The man growled a bit, his hand going into Harry's hair.

"Really, sir." Grimes said, sounding pained. "May I please be excused?" 

"You will stay there until I tell you that you can leave." Malfoy said sharply, his eyes flaring for a moment, and Harry glanced over his shoulder. Grimes' face was brilliant red, and he looked as uncomfortable as anyone he'd ever seen. He turned back to Malfoy, one dark brow raised. Malfoy pursed his lips and selected a slice of melon from the tray, ignoring the look. Harry leaned into his side as he stroked his hair, petting him as if he were a cat, then held the golden melon to his mouth. Harry took a small bite, and shuddered. "You don't like melon?"

"It isn't ripe," Harry answered with a slight sneer.

"Did you hear that, Grimes?" Malfoy said sternly, laying the remnants of the melon slice on his plate. "Young Master Trenton says the melon isn't ripe." 

"My apologies, sir," Grimes said, sounding suffocated. "I'll inform the cook." Malfoy held his fingers before Harry's mouth, and obediently, Harry licked the juice from them, then holding Malfoy's gaze, he pulled two into his mouth and began to suck on them, swirling his tongue around them suggestively. Malfoy's face tightened, his eyes darkened, and Harry felt the stirring of an erection near his hip. _Well, well, well,_ he thought. He nearly grinned in grim satisfaction, but managed not to. When Malfoy withdrew his fingers from his mouth, Harry flicked the center of his palm with his tongue. "My," Malfoy said, eyes unnaturally bright, sounding breathless. "You are multi-talented." Harry just smiled and licked his darkened lips. "Shall we see what other little surprises you have for me?" 

His hand slid from Harry's chin to his knee, then slowly up the inside of his thigh. Closing his eyes as if in anticipation, Harry concentrated. He wasn't remotely aroused, but when Malfoy's hand reached his crotch, he encountered what felt like a burgeoning erection. His full lips curled nastily. "Maybe not so little." He quipped. Harry's smile was predatory. 

"Thank you," he breathed as Malfoy fondled him. "But that's only half of it."

"I imagine," his grin widened, then he spoke with the air of Father Christmas about to bestow a much desired gift, "I have a little something here that might just...speed things along."

He leaned forward and picked up a small silver box that had sat before his plate throughout dinner, pulling it closer. When he opened the lid, it took every ounce of acting ability Harry had for him to look delighted. 

The box was full of little diamond shaped blue pills; hundreds of them. He had a brief flash of pills just like that, at least half a dozen, being forced down his throat, but he tamped the memory down viciously. "Oh," he said smiling, "candy."

"Darling child," Malfoy laughed. "Take some."

Harry reached out with his hand and took two from the silver box. "Just two?" Malfoy snorted. "Here love, the more the better," he took a handful as if they were, in fact, candy and poured four more into Harry's palm, then put at least six in his own mouth and washed them down with a drink of wine. He watched Harry expectantly, and Harry calmly seemed to palm the pills into his mouth, then took Malfoy's glass from his hand and took a drink as well. What Malfoy didn't see was that, using the oldest magician's trick in the book, Harry had simply made the little blue discs disappear. 

"Now," Malfoy leaned forward and nibbled on Harry's neck, and Harry angled his head to allow him freer access, "I think I'd like to see what you look like without the makeup, and the clothes."

 

 

_THEN_

_April 13th_

 

_During the week after the attack, Harry had one of his life's oddest moments; he attended his own funeral._

_Ginny had not been immediately in favor of the idea of faking Harry's death, but Ron's argument that it was the only way to keep him safe had been persuasive. Hermione had understood instantly, and once the two men had presented their reasoning to Shacklebolt, he had come on board, as well. When all was said and done, the only people who knew that Harry Potter was, in fact, not dead were Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Shacklebolt. Healer Smithwyck had requested that his memory be obliviated and a new memory placed, one where he had to tell Ginny Potter that, unfortunately, her young husband was dead. Unspeakable Granger had done it for him, with the promise that she would return to restore his true memories once the case was closed._

_The funeral was held at the Burrow, and was attended by literally hundreds of witches and wizards. The funeral pyre had been set up near the bank of the Weasley's pond; Ron had handled the procurement of the body of an unclaimed transient from the local morgue, and Hermione had transfigured it into an exact replica of Harry. When he first saw it, chills had run over the surface of his skin as he stared at it. It was a succinctly out of body experience, quite literally. There was the pale skin and the messy black hair, the lightning shaped scar and the round, wired rimmed glasses. They'd dressed him in high-necked black robes and covered him in a gold velvet blanket, his hands crossed over his chest and a replica of his wand gripped in his right hand. Ginny, in black robes, had given a convincing performance as the stoic young widow, helped perhaps by her parents' and siblings' very real grief. That was the one thing that Harry felt the worst about; that the Weasleys could not be told the truth._

_Molly wept into Arthur's shoulder, the twins looked pale and shell-shocked. Tonks and Lupin held each other up near the water's edge, Luna Lovegood held Hermione's hand. Ron looked pale in his black robes. There were tributes to his bravery and his selflessness, which made Harry vaguely uncomfortable, and tales of some of his more rambunctious moments from school, which brought a smile. But when the formal part of the service ended, and the pyre was ignited by a torch in Ginny's hand, he watched the body of the nameless man consumed in flames, and thought of Neville, and Dean, and Parvati, and Bill, Dumbledore and McGonagall… And Hagrid. And the tears that spilled down his cheeks had been for all of those who'd sacrificed so much, and never had a proper funeral pyre. He vowed then and there that every single Death Eater, including Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle, would pay for what they'd done. When he left, just a non-descript wizard in a sea of hundreds, no one had even looked twice at him._

_He'd stayed with Hermoine and Ron and baby Molly for the first two weeks, ducking into a back bedroom every time Grandma Molly stopped by to see the baby. When the little cherub burbled about ‘Unka Arry', Molly had sniffed and patted her gently. She didn't know that Uncle Harry was now a very real, daily playmate._

_Harry started to get real antsy by the end of the second week, and irritable. He wasn't sleeping well; his dark dreams left him shaken and weak, and he missed his wife. Finally, the second Friday after the funeral, Ron told him that Shacklebolt had said his vacation was over, and that it was time to assume a new identity and come back to work. The problem was, deciding what that identity would entail._

_He could look nothing like Harry, and his back-story had to have a ring of legitimacy. Harry read through books and magazines, trying to formulate in his mind who this new person was going to be. He was reading an article about Ireland's National Quidditch team, where the names of the players had been listed. Brian Donnelly, Sean O'Mara, Breckin Traherne.... "Breckin." Harry thought. "‘Hmmm. Breckin". He combined the first name with Donnelly, and it felt right when he whispered it. "Breckin Donnelly." After years of hanging about with Finnegan, the accent wasn't a problem. "Breckin Donnelly, Auror trainee from Dublin." That way they could assign him to Ron, who had recently lost his long time partner, without there being much of a ripple._

_Next was to decide what Breckin was going to look like. Harry could become anyone, but it helped if he had a visual reference. He rummaged through the magazines on Hermione's coffee table, and came up with another, something about American Cinema. He shrugged and opened it, and saw a picture of a young bloke standing by a pool in a bathing suit. As he studied the muscled torso, his lips curved in a slow smile. Why not? He thought. It was his choice; he didn't have to choose to be ugly. The fellow was blonde and blue eyed, which Harry wasn't going to do, but the bones were good. He dropped the magazine back onto the coffee table and walked over to a mirror hanging above a wooden sideboard. Closing his eyes, he concentrated, and began to feel his body change. He got taller, broader through the shoulders, deeper through the chest. He felt a prickling along his scalp and an odd, malleable feeling in his face. When it stopped, he opened his eyes, and a complete stranger was looking back at him. A stranger with sun streaked brown hair, dark brown eyes and an engaging smile. He decided to spring his new look on his friends that night at dinner. He raided Ron's closet for jeans and a t-shirt that would fit him, because his own clothes had become uncomfortably tight and short through the legs, then left a note saying he'd be back at six, which he knew would upset them enough. He was all but under house arrest. He wandered down to the corner muggle market to buy Hermione some flowers, and wondered why every woman in the place was staring at him, but it was kind of nice that it was for something other than his scar._

_When he got back, he rang the doorbell politely, and waited. Hermione answered, and stared._

_"Hello?" She said carefully, and then frowned a bit when she seemed to recognize her husband's blue jeans._

_"Allo, love." Harry said with a cheeky grin, using, his brogue to full effect, whipping the flowers out from behind his back. "For my hostess."_

_Her mouth dropped open, and she laughed in delight. "Harry!"_

_He held up his hand, his finger in front of his lips. "No, no, no," he scolded. "Breckin Donnelly."_

_"Well, Mr. Donnelly," her eyes sparkled as she opened the door. "Won't you come in?"_

_He'd entered the house, and grinned when Ron came down the hallway, Molly on his hip. "Was it Harry?" He said anxiously, then stopped dead when he saw the stranger in his entryway._

_"Unka Arry!" Molly cried in delight, holding out her arms to the tall, brown haired man._

_"No, darling," Ron said softly. "That isn't Uncle Harry." Molly frowned at him as if he'd lost his mind, and ‘Breckin' grinned. Ron looked at his wife. "Hermione?"_

_"Ronald, please allow me to present Mr. Breckin Donnelly," she paused. "Your new partner."_

_Ron's mouth dropped open. "Son of a bitch," he said dryly. "You couldn't be someone ugly?"_

_Harry laughed. "Now, how fair would that be to your darlin' sister? Remember, she's stuck with me for a bit."_

_Ron grimaced and closed his eyes. "Christ. Another Irishman."_

_"UNKA ARRY!" Molly screamed to get his attention, and Harry held out his arms to her. She snuggled against his chest and touched his face with her pudgy hand, and he smiled at her. "Pretty," She patted his face._

_"Lovely," Ron muttered._

_"Yes, darling," Hermione said, taking her daughter from the tall man's arms. "He's very pretty. But he's going to have to do a little work on that face, I'm afraid."_

_"And why's that?" Harry asked._

_"Because every Muggle woman in the country is going to want to jump you," She said with a smirk. "And even some of the witches I know would want to find out how Brad Pitt became an Auror."_


	7. Now and Then: Chapter 7

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 8:00 p.m.

Malfoy left a kiss on Harry's neck just above the neckline of his tee shirt, his tongue grazing the soft white skin, then eased him off of his lap.

"There's a powder room just at the end of this hall," he said, running his hand down Harry's chest, opening it on his flat stomach. "Why don't you go," he reached up with his other hand and touched the dark lips, "wash off the paint."

"Whatever you want." 

"So agreeable," Malfoy cupped the boy's groin briefly, then pushed him back with a hand on his thigh. 

Harry turned to go. "Why don't you show him where it is, Grimes," Malfoy said with a self-satisfied smirk and picked up his wine glass. "And stay to see if there's anything the young gentleman needs."

Harry looked up at the disapproving face of the older man, and smiled cheekily. "Yes, Grimes," he said insolently, "you never know what the ‘young gentleman' might require."

The butler narrowed his eyes even as Malfoy laughed. 

"This way, sir," he said softly, and Harry followed him. 

They walked down a long hallway, passing several dark, musty rooms where most of the furniture was covered with sheets and the drapes were drawn. The house looked as if it were either being closed up, or had never been properly opened; as if it were a ghost house and the only rooms in use were the ones that were being actively haunted. When they reached the end of the hall, Grimes paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned back, his brow furrowed. 

"You don't know what you've walked into here," he whispered hoarsely, looking back down the hall. "You should get out while you can."

Harry frowned at him. "Pardon me?" 

"He's a monster. He has boys like you in here all of the time, and some of them are never seen again. There's a back way...if you hurry..."

"Grimes?"

Draco's voice echoed down the hallway, and the old man froze, his eyes wide with fear. "Did Master Trenton find what he needed in the loo?"

Harry quickly opened the door and peered inside, grabbing the old man's wrist before he could turn away. "He's been very helpful," he called, shaking his head quickly and holding up a hand when Grimes started to speak. "For a disapproving, stuffy old fuck." 

Malfoy's laughter reached them, and it had a harsh ring to it. "Met your match in that one, Grimes." 

"Yes, sir," Grimes answered, looking mystified. Harry jerked his head toward the bathroom door, and the old man stepped inside followed by Harry. He closed the door after them.

"What...?" he began, his cheeks flushing. Harry held up his hand, then opened the door and checked the hallway again to be sure it was still empty. He eased it closed. 

"Get out of the house," Harry said quickly, dropping all signs of affectation. Grimes seemed as shocked by that as by what he was saying. "Take whoever else is here with you."

"But," the old man gasped, "He'll hurt you. You don't understand."

"I understand more then you know, and he won't hurt me. I have back-up, okay?"

"Are you the police?" Grimes asked, his eyes very wide.

"Something like that. Now go."

He peeked out the door, and his heart dropped when he saw Malfoy standing at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall. Harry held up his hand to the old butler and jerked his head toward the hallway, causing Grimes' face to blanch. He manufactured an evil laugh. "Oh, come on, Grimes," he said loudly, looking back at the old man, his eyes widened meaningfully. "Go along with it," he mouthed, then spoke loudly. "I simply asked where the lube is. Get a grip." He laughed again, then pulled the door fully open to find Draco standing not ten feet away.

"Whatever are you doing in there?"

"Well, you told him to stay and see if there was anything I needed," Harry said flirtatiously. "But I don't think he knows what lube is, darling."

Malfoy's lips curled in a wicked sneer. "Lubricant, Grimes. So that things slide," he looked at Harry, "more easily."

Harry grinned back. "I'll bet you have a supply, don't you?"

"Extensive."

"All right then, Grimes," Harry said pompously, his brows raised, doing a creditable impersonation of Malfoy which even he appreciated. "You may go." 

Grimes hurried past him and down the hall. When he drew even with Malfoy, his voice stopped him. 

"You may have the rest of the night off, Grimes," he said coldly. "But tomorrow we are going to have a conversation about your manners." 

"Yes, sir." 

He left with every impression of a man happy to make his escape. 

"You really must forgive the poor old thing," Harry said with a grin. "He's probably not used to public displays of queer affection." 

Draco grinned. "Probably not. He worked for my father. He wasn't a kind master, but he was definitely straight."

"Boring," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "I'll wash now that I've had my fun." 

"You are a wicked little thing." 

Harry's grin was slow, and crooked. "You have no idea." He started to close the door, and then looked back. "Want to watch?"

Draco straightened away from the wall, shook his head. "No. I think I like the element of surprise. I'll wait for you in the sitting room."

"Perfect," Harry said, sending him one last smile and closing the door.

He leaned against the counter, willing his heart rate to return to normal. "Christ, that was close."

Across the street and down the road, Ron and Seamus had been holding their collective breath. "No shit," Ron said softly when he heard Harry's comment. "Too close." 

 

_THEN_

_May 1st, after 11:00 p.m._

 

_Ginny couldn't help but appreciate Breckin Donnelly. When he first showed up at the ministry, and passed her in the hallway on her way to her job at the Muggle relations office, she'd done a double-take herself. Especially when he'd sent her a wicked grin. All of the women in the building were abuzz about Ron's ‘new partner from Ireland'. They tried not to say too much around her; after all, the minister of magic had declared the entire month a time of mourning for a national hero and_ _The Prophet ran daily articles about Harry and his storied career, and how she was adapting to life without him. She was a figure of sadness and pity, and it really wasn't appropriate for her to be ogling the new guy, even if she did know that inside of that beautiful body was her equally beautiful husband. Fortunately, she got to go home to him. He'd sneak over after dark every night, and leave just before dawn each morning._

_What she was beginning to find odd, however, more than three weeks after Harry's ‘funeral', was that ‘Breckin' rarely became Harry, even when they were alone, except when he was asleep. At first, it was kind of fun, almost illicit, and she loved the accent. The first time he'd taken her to bed as Breckin, he'd literally taken her breath away. But, the longer it went, and the more time he spent as the Irishman, the more concerned Ginny became. It was as if, even when they were alone, Harry was avoiding being himself, and she could not help but wonder why._

_She was lying awake late one Friday night. Harry had come in much later than usual, exhausted, as he was most of the time. She knew he wasn't sleeping well, and he'd fallen into bed, kissing her goodnight wearing Breckin's handsome face. She'd watched him fall asleep, watched the tall, rangy golden body begin to pare down to the muscular, fair body that she loved, watched the brown hair thicken and darken, watched the face soften into the elegant lines of Harry Potter, and her heart had ached. She loved him so much, had loved him for so long, and she'd missed the sight of him. Not just the sight, the feel. Watching the funeral pyre, and his beloved body go up in smoke, even though she knew it wasn't him, not really, had been horrifying for her. She ran her pale hand over the muscular chest, felt the crisp chest hair, and slid her nails through the thick trail of black hair that grew from his navel, downwards to disappear into his boxer shorts._

_"I love you, Harry Potter," she breathed, kissing one of his dusky colored nipples, her hand caressing the hard muscles of his stomach._

_"Love you, Ginevra Weasley," he'd mumbled, and she smiled against his skin._

_"I've missed you."_

_"Right here, baby," he breathed. Her hand continued its downward slide until it entered his shorts and curled around his hardening erection. She felt him stiffen a bit, and then felt his body began to change. Grow, thicken, shoulders widen..._

_"No," she said softly, squeezing gently. "No, Harry. I don't want Breckin, I want you. Please. Please."_

_He sighed. "Gin..." he whispered._

_"No. I want my husband." She looked up into his green eyes, already darkening toward brown. "It's been fun, sort of like cheating on my husband, with my husband." She smiled faintly. "But this is the body I love; this is the body I married. Please, Harry. Let me love you. Let me love you, as you."_

_He looked utterly miserable for a moment, then he closed his eyes and the changes that had begun reversed, and it was Harry beside her. Harry's taste, Harry's smell. She sighed in delight, rose above him, and eased his boxer shorts down his thighs._

_When she bent and took him into her mouth, she knew right away that something wasn't right. He was so stiff, and he was trembling._

_"Ginny, stop," he moaned, sounding lost._

_"Harry," she whispered against his skin. "Relax, baby, and let me take care of you." But he couldn't; he was tense, and a cold sweat seemed to have broken out on his skin, and his erection was fading fast._

_Knowing of something that had always made Harry ready and hard as a rock, something that she usually only did when she was feeling particularly needy and he was wound particularly tight, Ginny eased one hand between his legs and caressed his balls gently, then slid her fingers back further and pressed on the perineum, just below the puckered entrance to his body. Harry usually loved this, but with a muffled curse, he shoved her away, and was out of bed, staring down at her, his eyes wide, his breath harsh._

_"Harry?" she said softly, confused. "What did I do?"_

_With a ragged sound like a sob, he went into their bathroom and slammed the door. She sat in the middle of the bed, feeling completely lost. Minutes later he left the bathroom, fully dressed, and without a word to her, slammed out of their small house. She stared at the front door as it continued to vibrate on its hinges, too shocked to cry._

_Ron didn't know where to look. Harry had been gone for hours now, it was the dead of night, and the stupid git could be anywhere. He tried Diagon Alley and the Leaky, even went to the Ministry. Nothing. Harry had simply disappeared._

_When he'd gotten the owl from Ginny saying to come quick, he hadn't even really been that surprised. He'd sort of been expecting some form of crisis since that night at the hospital, and his friend hadn't been right in days. Ron was no expert, but he knew that when something like what had happened to Harry happened to a person, ultimately, there were consequences. The healer had told him that. Now, he wished old Smithwyck hadn't been obliviated. He could use some advice._

_He and Hermione had dressed and gone to Ginny's after dropping the baby off with Molly and Arthur, telling them Gin was having a ‘bad night', which her parents had accepted sorrowfully. The first words out of her mouth had been, "what did those bastards do to my husband," and Ron knew that the jig was up. He'd wanted to let Harry tell Ginny in his own way, but he hadn't done it, and now she had to know. He'd given them what information he had, while both his wife and Harry's wife had wept silently. "Find him, Ronald," Hermione said emphatically, "Find him and bring him here. I can help him." He had kissed her quickly, and then left them to comfort one another while he went in search of his best friend._

_"Where the bloody hell are you?" he asked himself pensively as he stood on the sidewalk in front of the Ministry. He wasn't good at locator spells; that was Hermione's area. He could be anywhere; Hogwarts, Godric's Hollow, anywhere. But then, suddenly, something seemed to be tugging under his breast bone, pulling him to the left, and he set off along the sidewalk. He'd walked about sixteen blocks when he saw a small park, and realized where he was. Here, in a truly seedy part of Muggle London, was the park where Harry had been found by Shacklebolt, all but dead. He walked toward it cautiously, looking around, and there on a bench under a spreading oak tree, he recognized a huddled figure with a dizzying surge of relief. He sighed, and walked toward him slowly, not stopping until he was standing right in front of him. Harry didn't even look up. Just sat there, with his eyes closed, the collar of his jacket turned up around his throat._

_"Are you trying to get killed?" he asked dryly. "Because if you are, you picked a perfect place." He glanced around at the shifting shapes of drug dealers and others amongst the heavy shrubbery. He could feel eyes on him, on them._

_"Go away," Harry said softly, still not looking up. He looked as if he were carved of marble._

_"Fuck you." Ron flopped on the bench beside him. "You scared my sister to death, you know," he said conversationally. "And my pregnant wife. I don't appreciate being the only one left to deal with hormonal women."_

_"You knocked her up," Harry said flatly._

_"Nice." Ron scowled. "Couldn't you at least have transformed into Breckin? He's bigger, brawnier."_

_"Yeah, because God knows, I can't fucking take care of myself," Harry spat bitterly. Ron turned his head and shot him a look._

_"I bloody refuse to feel sorry for you. You walked out on your wife in the middle of the night..."_

_"She's better off," he said softly, so softly Ron almost didn't hear._

_"What the hell does that mean?"_

_"Just what I said," Harry retorted angrily. "She's better off without me. She wants Harry, damn it and I can't be Harry right now! Do you understand? I can't stand to be in his skin, to live in his body. This body. It hurts, Ron. It fucking hurts. I can't stand it."_

_"Harry," Ron said gently, reaching out to touch him. He flinched._

_"Don't touch me," he hissed, pulling his legs up and wrapping his arms around them. "Don't touch me, don't look at me. I can't stand it."_

_"Harry," Ron said, truly alarmed now. Fighting the rigidity of his body, Ron wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close, pressing his forehead against the side of his face. "Don't do this. Let us help you. Please."_

_"You can't," Harry said harshly, his breath coming in tearing gasps. "You can't. I should have died. I wish I had. I'll just...stay Breckin. Breckin isn't....Breckin wasn't... If Ginny doesn't want me, that's okay, but I can't be Harry anymore. I can't."_

_"Harry, love, please," Ron pleaded, holding him harder._

_"Bloody poufs."_

_They both stiffened to find two men standing in front of the bench, not five feet away. They were looking at Ron and Harry in disgust, and they were holding bats in their hands. "Do you know what we do to queers in this neighborhood? We beat the living shit out of them, that's what, and then we toss their bodies in the Thames. Kiss each other goodbye, girls, because this is the last park you'll fuck in..."_

_Ron surged to his feet with a muffled roar, and the two men took a step back, suddenly realizing that the man who had looked so small sitting down was actually several inches taller than either of them, and built like a boxer. They took another step back from the fury in his face._

_"What did you say to me?" Ron asked dangerously._

_"I...uhm..." the mouthy one was backpedaling as quickly as he could. "Perhaps we misunderstood." He gestured towards Harry, who was still holding his legs and watching them, wide eyed. "He just looked queer, you know, sitting there..."_

_"So help me, God," Ron said through clenched teeth. "You say one more word, and I'll be shoving that bat down your throat. Get the fuck out of here!"_

_If Ron hadn't been so furious, and they hadn't been so frightened, their retreat might almost have been amusing. He turned back to Harry, and found him rocking slightly, his eyes clenched closed. Ron went to him, sat beside him, and wrapped his arms around him._

_"My hero," Harry said with what sounded like a desperate laugh._

_"Let's get out of here." With a pop, he apparated them out of the park and into his and Hermione's bedroom in their tiny house, his arms still locked around him. It only took Ron a moment to realize that Harry wasn't laughing, he was sobbing brokenly._

_"Harry, don't," he said softly, pulling him against him even tighter. "Don't."_

_"You should have let them have me," he said brokenly. "They're probably right, you know? Even drunks and drug addicts could recognize it. And then at least Ginny could move on..."_

_"What in the bloody hell are you talking about?"_

_"About me. About me looking queer. They're probably right. I never should have gotten married, I never should have put her through it..."_

_"Harry, that's crap," Ron said loudly, truly alarmed now. "Don't you love Ginny?"_

_"Yes!" Harry gasped out, tears streaking his pale face. "Yes. My God, I love her so much it's eating me alive. But you don't understand, Ron. You don't understand..."_

_"Then explain it to me."_

_Harry took and released several gasping breaths that sounded painful in the silence of the small house._

_"That night," he began and had to stop and compose himself again. He wouldn't look at Ron, just stared at the floor, tears streaking down his ashen cheeks. "That night, with Malfoy, and Crabbe and Goyle..."_

_"What about that night, Harry?" Ron asked, putting his hand on Harry's shoulder. He stiffened._

_"You aren't going to want to touch me," he said in a deadened voice. "You aren't going to want to be near me." Ron tightened his fingers on Harry's shoulder and wouldn't let go._

_"I'll always want to be near you," Ron said hoarsely. "Now, tell me about that night, Harry."_

_There was a long pause, and for a moment, Ron thought he was going to refuse to answer. Finally, he began, and the deadened voice was the worst thing Ron had ever heard._

_"For a while, I thought I could live with it. That it would go away, that I'd feel better. But it isn't. It's worse. Every day, it gets worse and worse until I can't sleep because I'm afraid of the nightmares, and I can't let Ginny touch me in my own skin because I..." he stopped for a moment, caught a deep breath. "They grabbed me outside of the Leaky Cauldron. I felt the Imperius hit, but I couldn't do anything about it because I was a little drunk. I felt a sting in my arm, and then nothing. For the longest time, nothing. When I finally did wake up, I was in the dungeons beneath Malfoy's house. I know that now. At the time, I had no idea where the fuck I was. Only that I was cold, and tied up in some sort of ... swing thing, suspended from the ceiling, and naked..." Ron caught a breath but didn't interrupt; just tightened his grip on his friend. "Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle were there, and Malfoy held my head and forced my mouth open, and Crabbe shoved this handful of blue pills into my mouth, and then Goyle poured wine in on top of them. It was swallow or choke to death. The whole time they were laughing, telling me what a great time we were going to have..."_

_Ron felt tears begin to slip down his cheeks, but he didn't speak, didn't move._

_"I felt so fucking weird, like I was in my body, but I wasn't. The room faded away, they faded away, and then.... Oh, Christ," his voice broke on a sob._

_"You don't have to say it, Harry," Ron said suddenly, his own voice ragged. "You don't have to say it; you don't have to think about it."_

_"But that's just it," Harry said brokenly. "It won't go away. It's just getting worse, and every time I sleep, it's there. He's there." He turned his head into Ron's shoulder, his voice laced with shame. Ron felt a chill race down his spine "Smiling. Laughing. Saying he always knew. Then tonight, when Ginny touched me... the worst part is... my god," his voice dropped into a mere breath of sound. "I fucked him, Ron."_

_Ron felt something like an electric shock run down his spine, a warning. He went very still. "Who, Harry?" Harry's entire body began to shudder. It was a long time before he answered._

_"Malfoy."_

_Ron couldn't help it; he recoiled and looked at Harry in horror._

_Harry turned away from the revulsion on Ron's face, curling in on himself. "I told you. I told you, you wouldn't be able to touch me."_

_Ron shook his head like a big dog shaking water from his ears. He hadn't just heard what he thought he had, he couldn't have. "What... How, Harry?" he breathed. "How does that just... happen?"_

_"I don't know." He shook his dark head in despair. "I swear to God, I don't know. There's just... images... flashes." He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes._

_"Maybe you're wrong," Ron said suddenly. "Maybe that didn't really happen at all."_

_Harry turned his head to look at him, and his eyes looked deadened and dark. "It happened, Ron. That much, I do remember. Clearly."_

_"Christ." Ron breathed. Harry looked back at the floor._

_"What Crabbe and Goyle did..." he stopped, closed his eyes, his jaw flexing, "It was humiliating, and disgusting. It was horrible, but I could have lived with that. They've always hated me, and pain is just pain, you know?" Ron nodded dazedly. "But what I did.... I can't forgive myself for what I did. What kind of twisted fuck am I?"_

_Ron leaned back and looked at the back of his head for a long time, then reached over and gently curled his palm around Harry's nape. He didn't pull away, but he began to weep softly. "Ah, don't mate. Don't. You're killing me here." He rubbed his hand over Harry's tight shoulders, but if anything, his sobbing grew harsher, deeper, and more painful to listen to. Finally, unable to bear it anymore, Ron wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into his chest, holding his head pressed to his throat. "Don't, Harry," he whispered. "I can't stand it."_

_"How can you bear to touch me, after what I did?" Harry groaned._

_"Because I love you, you great git," Ron said, squeezing him hard. "I'll always love you." He paused, and his jaw firmed. "And I don't believe for one minute that you voluntarily fucked Draco Malfoy."_

_Harry jerked at the sound of the name. "Ron, I remember...."_

_"Then there's something wrong with the memory. And you and I both know perfectly well that memories can be tampered with."_

_Harry's breath hitched in his throat, and he went very still. "Do you think that's... even possible?"_

_"I'd bet my life on it." He held Harry out from him slightly, put a hand beneath his chin to make him look into his eyes. His black lashes clung together in wet, star like points around his wide green eyes. "I do not, for one minute, believe that you threw over a lifetime of despising the son of a bitch after one drink, then voluntarily went back to his place to shag him. Think about that, Harry. It doesn't make any sense."_

_Harry swallowed heavily. "It doesn't," he sighed heavily, his shoulders sagging. "It doesn't."_

_"Then they either fucked with your head, or it was the drugs, or both. Didn't Smithwyck explain the drugs to you?" he asked hoarsely._

_Harry wouldn't look at him. "I wouldn't talk to him about it. I haven't spoken to anyone about it."_

_"My God, Harry."_

_Harry's eyes were still streaming as he looked into Ron's. "But..."_

_"No. No buts. For Christ's sake, Harry. Do you have any idea what they gave you?"_

_He turned his face away and shook his head._

_"No, don't look away from me." Those streaming green eyes were breaking his heart, but he had to make him understand. "They gave you a whole cocktail of Muggle shit, all of it designed to break down your natural defenses and make you unable to fight anything they wanted to do to you. How did Smithwyck put it," he fought for the memory, "the combination was designed to ensure your cooperation, if not your active participation, completely against your will. That's what he said; your body didn't betray you, Harry. You didn't betray Ginny. It was the drugs."_

_"But Malfoy?" Harry breathed. "Jesus, Ron. I've seen myself killing the snarky son of a bitch a hundred times, but...this?"_

_"That I can't explain. But I'd bet Hermione can."_

_Harry recoiled. "I can't talk to Hermione about this," he said hoarsely. Ron rubbed his nape with gentle fingers as Harry ran his hand over his wet face. "I'd be too humiliated to talk to her about it."_

_"What?" Ron said softly. "You don't trust her?"_

_Harry shot him a sharp look. "That's not fair. I'd trust her with my life; you know that."_

_"Then trust her with this."_

_Ron tightened his hand around Harry's nape, and held it there. "Let me help you. And let Hermione help you. Would talking about it be worse than what you're doing to yourself now? What you're doing to Ginny?"_

_Harry took a deep, ragged breath. "No," he said, sounding weary. "What can Hermione do?"_

_Ron shrugged. "I don't know. But she wouldn't say that she could help if she couldn't."_

_"No, that's true. No false modesty for our girl." They shared a weak smile. Harry's eyes stayed on Ron's face. "Ron," he breathed finally, "when we were.... searching for the Horcruxes..." he'd expected this, and sat very still. "The stuff we did, the three of us. I never considered that gay. Was I just being incredibly naïve?"_

_When the three of them had set out in search of the Horcruxes after their sixth year, the idea that they would become lovers would have struck them all as preposterous, and even disgusting. They were friends, best friends. Ron and Hermione were finally together, and even though he had broken up with her in order to protect her, Harry was quite deeply in love with Ginny. Their hunt was slow, but fruitful, and by the winter of the following year, they'd found and destroyed one Horcrux and were in Scotland, nearing the end of the search for a second. The night everything changed, they were in the magical tent that Arthur had provided, eating a quick dinner before their nightly research session began, when an owl arrived for Harry._

_Hermione had known instantly that something was very wrong. Harry was fair, but he turned grey, and his hands began to shake almost convulsively as he read the parchment. It fluttered from numb fingers to the tabletop and he buried his face in his hands._

_"Harry, what is it?" she'd asked in alarm. He looked up at her, and she immediately rose to her feet when she saw the devastation in his green eyes. Even Ron, who'd been engrossed in his meat pie, stared._

_"Mate?" he'd said softly._

_With a shattered sob, Harry had left the room, disappearing into the bedroom he slept in alone._

_"What?" Ron looked at Hermione, who had leaned across the table and scooped up the parchment. Her fingers come to her full lips, and she cried out as if in pain. He rose to his own feet when her eyes filled, as well._

_"Mione?" he muttered, gooseflesh on his arms._

_"It's Hagrid," she said, lifting distraught brown eyes. "He's dead."_

_"Jesus God," Ron had gasped, then caught her to his chest when she began to sob._

_The missive held little information; Hagrid had been on a mission for the order with Madam Maxime and his brother Grawp, trying to persuade the giants not to join Voldemort's growing army. All anyone knew was that the three dead._

_Harry would not speak to them, no matter how they tried. He sat on his bed, his back towards the door, and would not even acknowledge that anyone was speaking to him, and they both tried. Finally, beyond exhaustion, they had fallen into bed in their own room and almost immediately into deep slumber._

_It was a sound that woke Ron not much after that. A howling, like an injured animal; a keening wail that rent the night and made gooseflesh raise on his arms even though he wasn't quite awake._

_"What the hell?" he said groggily, pushing at his hair and sitting up in bed. The blankets fell to pool around his waist, leaving his chest bare in the cold night air. Hermione sat up beside him, anchoring her curls back with her hand. She had merely stripped out of her clothes before falling exhausted into their double bed, and now sat in her white bra and knickers. "What is that?"_

_"I don't know," Hermione said, rubbing at the gooseflesh on her arms. "It sounds like some kind of injured animal or something, but it almost sounds as if it's inside...." The sound broke off, then they heard what sounded like tortured sobbing._

_Their eyes met and held in horror. "Ron, its Harry," Hermione gasped. He'd been out of bed before the words had finished leaving her mouth._

_They'd found him curled in the middle of his bed in a fetal position, his arms wrapped around his knees, his face buried in the bedding as he rocked and sobbed. Ron sat behind him and immediately wrapped him in his arms, pulling the smaller man against him. Harry didn't even seem to know that he was there._

_"Harry," he said, his hands moving over his back gently. "Mate, stop."_

_"Oh, Harry," Hermione said, embracing him from the front. They held him between them as he sobbed out his heartbreak. "Sweetheart, don't. Please don't."_

_But it seemed as if some deep well of anguish inside of him had finally broken, that the loss of the gentle giant had done what the loss of his parents, and Sirius, and Dumbledore had not. He seemed broken, somehow, shattered, in so many pieces that they had no idea where to even start to put him back together again. And so they held him as he wept, until his grief infected them as well, and they were both crying with him._

_Hermione moved closer to him, her legs on either side of his curled knees, and forced them down so that she could sit astride his lap. She buried her face in his throat, her hands in his hair, and let deep, wracking sobs take her. His arms came around her convulsively. Ron pulled Harry back against his chest, pulling him into the well of his thighs, and pressed his face against Harry's shoulder, his arms encircling them both as silent tears dampened Harry's skin, his chest shuddering against Harry's back._

_That was what finally seemed to penetrate his misery; theirs. He took and released several deep, shuddering breaths, his hands moving to Hermione's wild mane of curls._

_"I know, Mione," he said softly, raggedly, holding her head gently between his hands. "I know. I know."_

_"Harry," Hermione rasped, her hands moving from his hair down his throat to his bare chest. "Harry, I hurt. My heart hurts."_

_He crushed her curls between his hands. "I know. Mine, too."_

_She pressed her cheek against his damp skin, her body shaking. "I can't stand this. I can't."_

_"I know," he repeated again. "I can't either."_

_He leaned back to look into her tear stained face, and saw the desolation in her eyes, then pulled her forward to kiss her gently; a kiss of consolation, and compassion, of understanding. But when their lips parted, they stared at one another in shocked wonder, fighting for air; something had penetrated the despair, something primal, needy, and desperate. Hermione made a distressed sound in the back of her throat, then caught Harry's cheeks in her hands and kissed him again, hard, her tongue thrusting into his mouth. He moaned, stunned but so violently and abruptly aroused that she had to feel it against her cotton covered mound. When she moved against him, his head went back on a savage groan. And fell to Ron's shoulder. Ron, whose chest was against his back; Ron, whose arms still held them both. Ron, whose girlfriend was still pressing herself against an almost agonizingly hard erection. Harry opened his green eyes and stared warily into dark blue ones to find them surprisingly close. He'd expected anger, recrimination, maybe even rage. He hadn't expected heat so raw that Harry felt singed by it. Then Ron had leaned in and taken his mouth in a searing, open-mouthed kiss, nothing shy or tentative about it, his tongue pressed aggressively against Harry's, and the brunette had shuddered and made a needy sound. One of Ron's hands moved to Harry's flat stomach, then slid down to curl around his hard cock, and Harry had cried out as that hand moved on him through his pajama bottoms, his knuckles moving against where Hermione's knickers were damp. They'd all groaned then._

_That was how it had begun. They really only came together when the pressures of what they were doing made life so filled with stress and tension that it was almost unbearable, or the losses made the grief excruciating. Like when McGonagall was killed, and Neville. They never talked about it, never set up a moment for an assignation. By unspoken understanding, they just ended up together, and then went their own ways again in the morning. But for Harry, in particular, that closeness, that contact, probably saved his sanity. And for the most part, their encounters were fairly innocuous; hands, mouths, kissing, touching. Until the night they defeated Voldemort. That night, they'd tumbled into Ron and Hermione's bed, a tangle of naked, aggressive arms and legs, still running on adrenalin from the battle and the thrill of having survived it. Harry had been inside of Hermione for the one and only time that night. And Ron had been inside of him._

_The next morning, Ron had wakened to see Harry seated on the side of the bed, square shoulders pale in a shaft of sunlight. There were bruises on his pale back, and new scars, but the shoulders were broad, the chest thick with muscle. Harry had become a man in the last two years and the softness of youth was gone forever._

_"You okay, mate?" Ron had whispered, Hermione still snuggled, sound asleep, against his chest._

_Harry had turned his head then, and smiled slowly. "Yeah," he'd answered. "I'm good." He'd paused for a moment, then lifted his hand and held it out to Ron. Ron stared at it, then slowly lifted his, and gripped it, hard, for just a moment. Without another word, Harry had risen, wrapped a blanket around his hips, and left the room. Nothing more needed to be said; they both knew that what the three of them had needed during the war was over, but that the friendship had been through trial by fire, and survived. They'd never slept together again._

_Considering Harry's question, Ron took and released a deep breath, thinking about what the experience had actually meant, what it said about him and Harry. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "I don't know if it makes us gay, or bi, or what. But if you were naïve, then I was too. It wasn't about the fact that you were a bloke, it was about the fact that you were Harry, and Hermione was Hermione, and I needed both of you, the same way that both of you needed me. We were in over our heads, and we were scared to death, and we turned to each other. I never put a label on it, because I've never felt that way about another man, before or since, and I don't believe that I will. But, if it's gay, so be it. I don't care. I love you, Harry." He touched his face gently. "And I also know that you love my sister, or you never would have married her."_

_"I do," Harry said simply. "So much... But what if I can't ever let her touch me again? It terrifies me, Ron. I don't want to hurt her."_

_"Well, given the way you two went at each other before this happened, I have to believe that once we get it straightened out, you're still going to want her. It may take awhile, but you have to believe it's going to be okay, Harry. We've been through too much for this to break us." He pulled him to him and rested his forehead against his friends. "Let's go see Hermione."_

_Harry nodded faintly, let Ron help him stand. "Walk, or apparate?"_

_"Apparate," Harry answered. "I'm too fucking tired to walk."_

_"You got it." He wrapped his arm around Harry's shoulders._

_"Ron?"_

_"Yeah, mate?"_

_Harry touched the freckled face gently, then leaned his head in and kissed him chastely on the lips, and stared into his eyes. "I love you, too." Ron nodded, and they disappeared with a soft pop._


	8. Now and Then: Chapter 8

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 8:20 p.m.

Harry stared at himself in the mirror above the sink, taking and releasing deep breaths, concentrating on calming himself, settling his heartbeat into a slow, steady rhythm.  He had almost complete control over every function of his body, and now was the time to exercise it.  They were getting to the meat of the evening, and it was imperative that he be utterly in control of his faculties.  When he'd regulated his heartbeat and his breathing, he closed his eyes, and concentrated.  This transformation wasn't as dramatic, and didn't take as long.  When he opened them again, he saw a face looking back at him that he hadn't seen in seven years; sixteen-year old Harry, only softer, prettier then he'd ever been.  Harry had always had hardness around the jaw, and a world-weary understanding in his green eyes, and the scar, of course; the tangible symbol of his enslavement to a cause.  Beginning when he was twelve, he'd also had a sinewy hardness to his body, honed by hours on a broomstick.  The image before him didn't have that toughened look. He'd also started shaving at 14 because of a heavy beard, but the skin before him was pale and unmarked by the blue shadow that was an almost permanent part of Harry's own face. Trenton was softer, slighter, and shorter; paler.  He had beautiful, soft lips and the thickest black eyelashes he could manage without them looking false.  He stared, the corner of his lip twisting.  Malfoy should love it.  Even the eyebrow and nose rings were gone, leaving just the diamond stud in his left ear.

"Okay, boys," he said softly for the benefit of his partners, "this is where it gets a bit dicey, and the timing is important.  Be on your toes, Ron.  I'm not really interested in fucking the bastard."

Across the road, both Ron and Seamus leaned closer to Seamus's floating speaker, as if they could hear better if they were nearer to it.

He took one last inventory, then left the bathroom.

When he arrived at the door to the sitting room, he saw that Malfoy had removed the black velvet robes and was back in his chair, tight black leather pants clinging to his long legs, a loose, white linen shirt with a deep flounce and long sleeves opened down the neck over a thin chest.  The ever-present glass of red wine was back in his hand, and the ruffles at his wrist covered his hands to the first knuckle.  He looked like something from another time, or from the cover of a romance novel, although no ten penny hero had ever been so painfully thin.  The fact that he probably was convinced that he was dead sexy showed just how far his dissipation had run. He looked like a vampire. He glanced up when Harry stopped in the doorway, and went very still.  After a moment, he set his wine glass on a side table and waved the boy forward.  

Harry walked to him, studying the face carefully.  There was definitely a difference.  There was an unhealthy looking flush on his cheeks, and his eyes seemed too bright, the pupils a pin-prick in a larger sea of dark grey.  He was high, and Harry knew that made him infinitely more dangerous.  Still, he approached with leisurely grace and stopped near his knees.  "Kneel," he ordered hoarsely, and Harry did, slowly, one black brow arching in amusement.  Draco leaned forward and bracketed the younger face in his cold hands, turning it first one way, then the other, staring.  "Madam Vanguard is very good," he whispered.  "You're just exactly what I ordered."

"We aim to please," Harry answered, but he dropped the flippant quality, recognizing that what Draco had found amusing before would probably infuriate him in his altered state.  Without being too obvious, he had to be as much like Harry as possible.  If Malfoy lost it and started hitting him, it would ruin everything.  Ron would barge in; the whole thing would get very messy.  He reached up and covered Malfoy's hand with his much smaller one, then turned his face into his palm and kissed it.  Malfoy's eyes softened a bit, his thumb reaching to caress the now pink full lower lip.  

"Sweet baby," he said gently, his thumb continuing to Harry's soft chin.  "You're so pretty, Harry.  So pretty."

Harry frowned a bit, his eyes on Draco.  "Harry?" he asked softly.

Malfoy froze for a moment, his tongue flicking out to dampen his lower lip.  "Someone... I knew," he whispered.

"Someone you loved?"  

Malfoy's eyes looked confused for a moment, then he nodded raggedly.  "Loved, and hated.  Wanted, always."

Harry turned his head again slowly, his eyes level on Draco's as he slid his tongue along the long, slender middle finger of his left hand.  "He hurt you," he murmured.  Draco watched the sinuous pink tongue in fascination as Harry curled it around the tip, then bit gently with straight white teeth.  He nodded a bit breathlessly.  "I won't hurt you,"  ‘Trenton promised'.  Malfoy's mouth twisted at the corner.

"Neither will he," the blonde said with wry humor.  "Ever again."

Ron cursed, his nostrils flared, and he turned and slammed his fist into a nearby wall.  The wood splintered, and his hand went through.  When he pulled it back, his knuckles were bleeding.

Seamus stared at him without saying a word.

 

_THEN_

_May 2nd, just after 3:30 in the morning..._

 

_Ginny and Hermione jumped when they heard the distinctive ‘pop' come from the bedroom down the hall, and they were both outside of the door when it opened and Ron stepped out wearily._

_"You found him?" Hermione asked in a hushed voice.  Ron nodded tiredly.  "Where was he?"_

_"That park, in London."  They both frowned.  "Where they found him...before."_

_Comprehension dawned, and Ginny made a strangled sound in her throat._

_"No, no," Ron clarified quickly, taking his sister's upper arm in his hand.  "He's okay.  He's not hurt.  Not physically, anyway."_

_"How did you find him?" Hermione asked, her eyes on her husband's pale face.  He shrugged. "What made you look there?"_

_"Don't know. Just a feeling."_

_She nodded.  It had always been that way with Harry and Ron. She was close with Harry; she always had been.  But, Ron and Harry were bonded in a way she scarcely understood._

_Ginny started to pull away, but he tightened his fingers around her arm.  "Let Hermione see him first, Gin," he said softly.  Anger flared in Ginny's eyes._

_"He's my husband," she said tightly._

_"We all know that," Ron went on doggedly.  "And when she's done, if we're lucky, you'll have him back.  But right now, he needs her."_

_"Why?" Ginny said brokenly, her eyes filling.  "What is it that I can't do, that Hermione can?"_

_"Sssh, Ginny," Hermione said gently, going to her and pulling her into a hug.  "It isn't like that."_

_"Isn't it?" Ginny sniffed, unresponsive in Hermione's arms.  "It has been, ever since you came back from the war."_

_Hermione and Ron exchanged a long look over Ginny's ginger head.  "Ginny," Ron said finally, gently standing behind his sister and putting his hands on her shoulders.  "This isn't about what went on during the war."  His voice was low and soothing, and Ginny's shoulders relaxed._

_Harry had refused to even discuss the idea of marriage with Ginny without telling her the truth about all of them.  The night they had returned to the Burrow, to a hero's welcoming feast unlike anything Molly Weasley had prepared before or since, he'd spent the evening trying to decide how to tell her.  They hadn't been together in more than two years, but he could tell by the way she looked at him that she still wanted him. And he wanted her.  She'd been cute at 16; at 18, she quite simply took his breath away. When dinner had been over and the dishes cleared, and they'd all been seated around The Burrow's comfortable, threadbare living room, Harry had risen and gone to Ginny, and held out his hand.  She'd looked up at him from her spot on an ottoman, her blue eyes wide._

_"Walk with me?" he'd asked gently.  She'd smiled slowly, and nodded.  Ron had watched them leave the house with a slightly melancholy smile, and Hermione had rubbed his back in silent understanding.  He'd turned to her, then leaned in and kissed her gently._

_They walked towards the pond.  It was October, and there was a nip in the air.  There were no clouds, and the stars were bright and the air filled with the scents of fall.  He'd paused beneath an old oak tree, and stared at the still black surface of the water, his hand in hers, the other in his pocket._

_"You look good, Harry," she'd said finally, leaning against his side.  "I was afraid that you wouldn't take care of yourself while you were gone."_

_"Hermione made sure I ate," he said with a slight smile, which faded after a moment.  He turned to her then, his green eyes somber.  "Ginny," he said softly, taking both of her hands in his, "when I left, I told you that I didn't think that it was a good idea for us to be together, that Voldemort used the people I loved to get to me."_

_"I remember," she said softly, squeezing his fingers. "I thought it was daft, but I remember."  He grinned weakly._

_"He's gone now, it's over, but I'll understand if..."_

_"Just stop," she said emphatically.  His eyes had widened a bit focused on hers.  "If you're going to say something mad like you'll understand if I've moved on, I may have to club you."_

_He blinked quickly, but the corner of his full lips curled._

_"I love you, you idiot," she went on softly.  "I have since I was a scrawny ten year-old, and you were standing on the platform at King's Cross in clothes three sizes too big and wearing taped spectacles." She released one of his hands, touched his face.  "Don't tell me that you didn't know this.  I've been in love with you since before I even knew who you were, and I've never cared that you were the great ‘Harry Potter'.  To me, you've always been that boy with the bowl cut and the big eyes." She caressed his forehead, and the scar that was nearly faded to white.  "That brave, reckless twelve year-old who saved my life in the Chamber of Secrets, the boy who made the nightmares go away.  My hero.  Not the wizarding world's hero, but my personal one. Not the first boy who ever kissed me, but I hope the last."_

_"Gin..." he swallowed heavily, then went on resolutely.  "Gin, I love you, too.  More than anything in the world. But there's something I have to tell you..."_

_"Is this about you, and Hermione and Ron?"_

_He could not have been more shocked if she'd hit him with a beater's bat.  He stared, his eyes wide, as he felt all of the color drain from his face._

_"Who told you?" he asked hoarsely._

_"My brother," she answered softly.  "He sent me an owl from Scotland.  The parchment was very cleverly disguised so that I could read the real message, but to everyone else it simply said; ‘War's over.  We're on our way home.'  I'm guessing Hermione is the one who knew that trick; seems beyond Ron, somehow."_

_Harry swallowed heavily.  "Ginny..." She was certainly being casual about this, and he found himself wondering if Ron had really told her everything._

_"Now, mind you," she went on as if he hadn't spoken, "I'm not going to lie and say that it didn't bother me that Hermione was your first and not me.  But I can let that go."  She stepped closer to him, slipping her hand to his cheek. "I can let all of it go, Harry.  All of it.  Whatever you had to do to come home to me, safe and sane, doesn't matter anymore.  Besides, I've always heard that bi-sexual men make the best lovers."  She paused, her head cocked to one side.  "Of course, this is all contingent on the fact that you promise not to keep shagging my brother."_

_He stared at her for a long moment, then sighed explosively and let his forehead fall to her shoulder.  "God, Ginny," he breathed.  "What did I do to deserve you?"_

_"You may want to retract that question when you get to know me better," she said with a smile in her voice, her hand coming up to caress his hair.  "But, for now, let's just say that we're both incredibly lucky."  She leaned back then, lifted his face with her hands, and stared into his green eyes._

_"Love you, Harry Potter," she'd whispered._

_"Love you, Ginevra Weasley," he'd responded breathlessly._

_"Kiss me?"_

_And he had, gently at first, almost tentatively, but Ginny was having none of that.  She pushed him back against the trunk of the old tree and kissed him as if her very life depended on it, with her mouth, her teeth, and her tongue.  She ran her hands over his chest, making an appreciative noise in the back of her throat._

_"This is new," she said when she'd pulled back for a moment to breathe, her hands spread on his heavy pectoral muscles._

_He slid a hand up from her waist and caught one of her newly full breasts in his palm.  "So is this," he smiled against her neck, his hand moving on her. She gasped, arching into his touch, her knee lifting to press between his thighs. He moved against it, and she exhaled on a gust._

_"Want you," she breathed between kisses, her hands going to the buttons that marched down his chest._

_"Want you, too."  His mouth opened on her throat, his teeth skimmed her skin._

_"Now, Harry."  She yanked the tail of his shirt out of his pants and pushed it from his shoulders._

_"Here?"  He glanced toward the house.  If someone came and looked out the back door, they were clearly visible.  "Gin..."_

_"Now.  Here."  She grabbed the waistband of his slacks and lowered herself to the ground, pulling him down on top of her._

_Later, he would reflect that it probably wasn't his finest hour, at least where sex was concerned.  She was needy, he was desperate, and truth be told, they both felt as if they had something to prove.  Ginny felt that she had to prove to him she was as desirable as Hermione and Ron had been.  Harry, that he still wanted her as much as he ever had.  The fact that he had wanted her with a fierceness that was liberating went a long way toward making him feel better about himself.  It had been quick, and rough.  They had moved just enough clothing for him to be able to enter her, and when he'd pressed home, their eyes had locked and held, and she'd sunk her nails into his shoulders as he began to move.  He had thrust quickly and gracelessly and she hadn't cared.  She hadn't been a virgin, and he hadn't cared.  All they'd cared about was that they were finally together, and when they came just seconds apart, it was as cataclysmic as anyone could have hoped.  He held her hips between his hard hands, and caught her shattered cry in his mouth.  Afterward, he'd held her, stroked her hair and realized that he probably was the luckiest bastard that had ever lived. She'd never mentioned his wartime relationship with his best friends again._

_They'd put it behind them years before, but Ron understood why it was coming up again  now. "This is about what Hermione does, what she can do to help him get over this.  If he doesn't get some help, it's going to kill him.  You understand that." Ginny nodded helplessly, tears spilling freely.  "So let her see what she can do, okay?"  She looked up at him over her shoulder, her eyes imploring.  "Gin," he said gently, reaching up to take her chin in his hand, "do you honestly believe I'd send my pregnant wife in to seduce your husband?"_

_"Do you honestly think it would even turn him on?" Hermione said ironically, patting her heavy belly.  Ron and Hermione exchanged an amused look and even Ginny smiled weakly._

_"I'm being stupid." Ginny brushed at the tears on her face._

_"No, you're scared," Hermione said gently.  "And in your place, I would be, too.  It's okay."  She kissed her gently on the cheek, then turned and opened the bedroom door, stepping silently inside._

_A small lamp was burning on the bedside table, throwing the small room into shadows.  Harry was lying on the queen-sized bed on his back, one leg bent at the knee, the other straight, one arm across his stomach, the other up with his forearm over his face.  Without even seeing his expression, despair was in every line of his solid body, and she sighed silently.  Moving to the side of the bed, she kicked off her slip on shoes and climbed up next to him on the duvet.  He didn't move._

_"Harry," she said gently, reaching out and touching the hand that lay on his stomach.  He turned his palm and caught her fingers, linking them with his almost desperately.  She leaned as close as her pregnant belly would allow. "Are you all right?"_

_He laughed, but he didn't sound even remotely amused.  "No," he answered flatly.  "No, sweetheart.  Not even close."_

_She scooted up on the bed, and still holding his hand, lay down next to him, her head on the pillow next to his.  "Look at me," she whispered gently. He took and released a deep breath, then dropped his arm from in front of his eyes and turned his head to look at her.  The pain in the green depths made her heart ache.  "Harry," she said tenderly, reaching up to touch his face with her fingers.  "Don't.  This wasn't your fault."_

_Harry closed his eyes for a moment at her touch, then opened them and rolled to face her so that they were lying on their sides.  "That's what Ron said, but I'm not sure I believe him."_

_"Sometimes, he's very smart."_

_"Just sometimes?" he asked with a quirk of his lips.  She nodded and smoothed her fingers over his brows, trying to smooth away the lines of worry and fatigue she saw there._

_"Just like, sometimes you aren't careless and trusting."_

_He winced.  "I believe this experience may have fixed that flaw."_

_"Then it won't have been for nothing. I love you, darling, but you've always been a bit of both."  He stared at her, not offended._

_"Ron said you can help me?" he said softly.  She nodded, her fingers moving from his brow to his damp black hair._

_"But you have to agree, wholeheartedly, and hold nothing back. You have to let me in."_

_He looked into her pensive face.  "What does that mean?" She paused for a moment, dropped her hand to his chest and placed it over his heart._

_"Part of being an Unspeakable is memory retrieval and cleansing," she said carefully.  "I'm a Legilimens, Harry, a very good one, but I can only do this with a willing mind."_

_"Cleanse, how?"  He frowned a bit.  Snape had been a Legilimens, but when he'd done it, Harry's mind had felt as if it were under attack._

_"I can take a memory from your mind," she said gently, "cleanse it of pain and guilt and recrimination, and then put it back. But you must first give it freely."  She paused, caressing his chest gently, "and I must see it all."_

_Harry's eyes squeezed tightly shut, and he began to pull up, into himself.  Hermione wrapped her arms around him and pulled him as close as her stomach would allow.  "Don't do that," she ordered softly, but firmly, tucking his head under her chin.  "Don't tighten up like that.  If you do that, I won't be able to help you."_

_"'Mione," he said brokenly.  "I can't..."_ __  
  


_"Hush," she whispered, smoothing her hand over his thick hair.  "You can.  You can trust me with anything, you know that."_

_"But this...." he wheezed.  "Christ!"_

_"Harry," she whispered earnestly.  "I'm scared for you, and I'm scared for Ginny.  This is tearing you apart, and you're turning from the one person who should be there for you.  This will help," she stated emphatically.  "I've done it before, and it works.  It allows you to remember what happened to you, but feel nothing.  Nothing.  No pain, no guilt, no fear...nothing.  Wouldn't that be a relief?"_

_"Oh, God," he shuddered.  "You have no idea..."_

_"Then let me help you."_

_He looked up at her, and the tears in his eyes shot pain through her chest.  "But you'd have to see," he said softly, sounding suddenly so young, so humiliated._

_"Harry," she breathed.  At that moment, the baby inside of her kicked, hard, right against Harry's stomach, and his eyes widened in surprise._

_"Wow," he said, looking down, anguish momentarily forgotten.  Hermione rubbed the spot._

_"I believe this baby may be born with a beaters bat in his little fist."  The baby kicked again, and Harry's eyes widened further.  He lifted his hand to touch, then paused, his eyes on her face.  Her look softened, and she took his hand and directed his palm over the spot where, quite clearly, a little elbow or foot was making its presence known.  He stared at her stomach in wonder and ran his elegant fingers over the small, moving knot._

_"My God, ‘Mione," he said in awe.  "I think that's a foot."_

_"Probably," she grimaced.  "It's about time for him to have turned."_

_"Does it hurt?"_

_She grinned now.  "Not this part, no.  It's just a bit uncomfortable."_

_"You say ‘him' like you know."  Harry felt the baby move again and shook his head in wonder._

_"I do know."  She placed her hand over his.  "That's little Harry James in there, making his presence known."  Startled green eyes lifted to hers. "I do hope your wife will forgive me for commandeering what by rights should have been your son's name."_

_Harry's eyes darkened again, but he didn't take his hand from her.  "My son," he breathed, then closed his eyes and let his head fall to the pillow.  He didn't speak for several moments.  "Okay, ‘Mione.  Let's do this."_

_"You're sure?"_

_His eyes opened.  "If I can't get this under control, there will be no children, there will be no marriage.  And I can't allow that.  So yes, I'm sure.  Just..." he swallowed heavily._

_"What, Harry?"_

_When he opened his eyes, there were tears in them again.  "Just please...don't hate me."_

_She frowned slightly, ready to deny that anything could make her hate him, but she sensed that was not what he needed.  Instead, she nodded slowly, her eyes level._

_"I'm going to touch you now," she said soothingly.  "Just close your eyes, and relax."_

_She put her hands up, one on either side of his head, her thumbs pressing into the soft spots just below his temples.  "Breathe deeply, evenly.  That's it. Now," she breathed close to his ear in a deep, gently soothing tone, "while maintaining that slow, steady breathing, let your mind drift back.  Don't tense up, don't imbue the memories with any emotion.  Treat it like you're at the muggle cinema, and you're watching a movie.  You're in the Leaky Cauldron, having a drink with Malfoy...."_

_Ginny and Ron were sitting anxiously in the living room when Hermione emerged from the bedroom nearly two hours later.  She was pale, and looked utterly drained, and Ron jumped to his feet to put his arm around her when she swayed slightly.  She looked at Ginny, who was watching anxiously._

_"Go to your husband," she said softly.  "He needs you."_

_Ginny jumped to her feet with a relieved sound, stopped just long enough to kiss Hermione's cold, pale cheek, than ran down the hall to the bedroom._

_Ron stared into his wife's eyes, a little frightened of the desolation he saw there. "Are you okay?" he whispered anxiously._

_"I just want to go home," she said listlessly.  He pulled her into his arms, and with a soft ‘pop', they were standing in their own bedroom.  She looked around as if bewildered to find herself there, then made a sound of distress, and lurched into the bathroom.  He arrived behind her just in time to hold her hair back as she was violently ill._

_"Ah, sweetheart," he crooned when her stomach was empty, quickly dampening a wash towel to hold to her forehead as he knelt on the cold tile floor behind her. She pressed her forehead into his palm, taking slow, steady breaths.  After a while, she sat, leaned back against him.  "Okay, now?"_

_She nodded listlessly.  They were quiet for a long time._

_"Do you know what they did to him?"_

_Her voice sounded hoarse, hard, laced with despair._

_"Some of it," he answered, not sure he really wanted to know, but knowing she couldn't bear the burden of it alone. He wrapped his arms around her and held her, his hands spread over where his son now lay sleeping beneath her heart._

_"They drugged him," she said flatly.  "They gave him so much, too much.  His heart felt like it was going to explode, and his body...he kept going in and out of consciousness.  And then he saw Ginny."_

_"Ginny?" Ron gasped.  "What?  How?"_

_"Malfoy must have used a glamour charm.  All I know is that, to Harry's mind, it was Ginny.  She began to touch him, even took him in her mouth."  She spoke dispassionately, but she was trembling.  Ron squeezed her shoulder, fearing what was to come.  "He was so high, Ron, he hardly knew what was happening, only that Ginny was somehow, miraculously there.  She finally got him... ready, and climbed on top of him and began to move.  And just when... when he couldn't hold back anymore, she changed.  She became Malfoy, and he was on top of him, and Harry was inside of him, and he was climaxing and he couldn't stop it..."_

_"Sweet Jesus," Ron gasped, feeling as if he might throw up, as well._

_"And Malfoy leaned over and said, ‘Hi, sweetheart.  Did you miss me?'  They laughed at him, told him they always knew he'd like it..." she shook her head desperately, her hair moving under his chin.  Ron's eyes hardened. "Then Crabbe and Goyle, they...they...oh, God."  She lurched to her knees and was sick all over again, but there was little left, and she dry heaved painfully._

_"Hermione," he moaned behind her, holding her.  If he'd known it was going to be this hard for her, he never would have allowed it, even to save Harry.  "This can't be good for the baby."_

_She shook her head. "It won't hurt him," she breathed.  "In fact, it's good.  It's the poison of what I've seen escaping.  It's happened before."  She took the cloth from his hand and wiped her face with it, then settled heavily back against him again.  She sat breathing deeply for a long time, then turned and sat with her back against the wall, looking at him, her eyes infinitely sad.  "He asked me not to hate him," she said softly, and Ron winced.  "As if I could ever hate him."_

_"I know."  He shook his head.  "He was eaten up with it."_

_A slight satisfaction entered her weary eyes.  "Not anymore.  He'll be all right now."_

_"Did you tell him the truth?"_

_"I didn't have to.  He can see for himself, now, without the haze that the drugs had put over everything.  He can see it for what it was, and deal with it."_

_"Is he okay?"_

_She sighed.  "He's bloody furious, but he understands that it wasn't his fault."_

_He reached out and touched her cheek.  "Do you know what a wonder you are?"_

_She grimaced weakly, but then her eyes hardened.  "It isn't going to be enough, to just catch them and put them away."  He stared into her eyes and saw into her heart.  "It isn't going to be enough.  They're a cancer.  They need to be eradicated, cut out, destroyed."_

_He nodded slowly, his own face grim._

_"I mean it Ron," she said flatly.  "They need to die."_

_He inhaled slowly.  "And they will."_


	9. Now and Then: Chapter 9

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 8:45 p.m.

 

 

 "Whoever he was, he didn't deserve you," Harry said, allowing his eyes to grow almost reverent.

"And you do?" Malfoy smirked, an expression Harry knew well.  For just a moment, he was the Malfoy of old, and Harry had an almost uncontrollable urge to hex him into oblivion.  Instead, he smiled slowly. 

"Probably not," he answered wryly.  "But I'll try."

Malfoy's hand caressed his face, his eyes growing distant and cloudy, his expression pensive, as if he were miles, and years, away.  He then lifted his long fingers to the boy's hair and found it stiff with product.  He frowned slightly.  "This isn't right," he muttered, then whispered an incantation, and Harry's hair relaxed into the soft slightly wavy look of their fourth year.  He was counting on Draco's altered state to prevent him from noticing that as the product melted away, the hair was suddenly longer. "That's better," he breathed, running his long, pale fingers through the silky black strands. "Much better. Like when you were fourteen, the year you won the Tri-Wizard.  The year he came back."  He fluffed the dark strands fondly.  "I spent an entire year wanting to get my hands on this hair."

"What's a ‘Tri-Wizard'?" Trenton asked, his green eyes wide.  Malfoy's face lost it's dreamy, preoccupied look, and he straightened.

"Nothing," he said quickly.  "Just a...a game.  You know, like Dungeons and Dragons."

"Oh."  The boy nodded as if in comprehension.  Harry had no idea what the hell Dungeons and Dragons was, but apparently a Muggle should.  "That's an interesting trick, by the way," Harry said a bit breathlessly, running his hand through his now silky hair.  "Care to tell me how you did it?"  Malfoy smiled slowly, garishly, his hand dropping to the boy's chest and rubbing a small nipple through the cotton.

"I know lots of interesting tricks."

"You won't share?"

"Ah, pretty little Muggle," he leaned forward and kissed the boys gently rounded chin, then nipped it with his teeth, just hard enough to pinch.  "The things I'm going to teach you before we're through.  We're going to share plenty."  He moved his mouth to Harry's throat, noticed the bruise just beneath his chin.  "Someone's been here before me."

"Occupational hazard," the boy said breathlessly.

"I don't think I like the idea."

"Sorry, love.  Costs more for an exclusive."

Draco laughed and opened his mouth on the pale skin, his tongue swirling.

"And what's a..." he drew in a sharp breath when he felt Malfoy's teeth again, taking sharp little bites of his neck.  "What's a Muggle?"

"It's a term of endearment," the blonde said ironically.  "You, my darling," Malfoy nipped him again, a bit harder, and Harry flinched involuntarily.  He closed his eyes and concentrated on removing some of the pain sensors from the soft white skin, distancing himself momentarily from the body he inhabited; it was too soon for him to meld with it; he had to be able to think.  It was the only way the rest of this was going to be possible. He could sit inside, removed, watching, waiting... "You are a Muggle.  An utterly adorable one.  And so tasty," he bit again.  This time, his teeth broke the skin and the boy jerked, but Harry scarcely felt it.  He moaned softly as if in both pleasure, and pain.  "You like that?" he asked, his hand lifting again, circling around the side of Harry's head to hold him in place, fisting his hair and tilting his head abruptly so that his neck was arched, exposed, vulnerable.

"I've always thought," ‘Trenton' breathed quickly, roughly, "that a little pain heightened the experience."

"Oy!  He had to say that," Seamus said, looking a bit green.  Ron didn't respond, just listened.

Malfoy laughed in delight.  "Oh, you are perfect." 

Then he latched his mouth onto the slender column of the young throat and began to suck, hard.

Ron gestured with his bruised hand when Malfoy's comment, then the wet sound of faint suction came through the sensitive speaker.  Seamus sighed, but shook his head.

Harry stared through green eyes across the room in total dispassion, even as he moaned and moved, rubbing his groin against Malfoy's boney knee.  This was an unexpected development.  He'd sort of thought Malfoy would wait until later to actually begin seducing him.  Apparently, there was something about him that turned the twisted fuck on.  His mouth thinned even as he closed his eyes and conjured a burgeoning erection.

Across the street, movement out of the corner of his eye caught Seamus' attention, and he turned to the hologram.  "The old man and the cook are leaving."  He pointed to the two small red lights that quickly exited out the back door.  Ron watched them, taking a steadying breath.

"He's in there alone with him now," he said softly, and he and Seamus exchanged a wary look.

 

_THEN_

_May 16th, 1:30 a.m._

 

_Ron Weasley sat in a darkened corner of the drab, filthy bar, nursing a firewhiskey, a stocking cap pulled down low over his head and ears, hiding his wealth of ginger colored hair. He wasn't the only one who seemed to be hiding something in the dark little pub; nearly everyone was making some effort to disguise what they really looked like.  Nearly every one, but Vincent Crabbe._

_The bar was located at the very end of Knockturn Alley, just past the infamous Borgin and Burkes, which had been closed by the Ministry after the break-in at Hogwart's and the death of Dumbledore.  Now the shop sat filthy and deserted, but it nearly hid the fact that this seedy little enterprise was right behind it.  Ron only knew because he'd paid handsomely for the information just that afternoon; Crabbe was meeting mates for a drink, and Goyle was out of town.  The fat little fuck would be alone. Ron had been waiting for this opportunity for the two weeks since Hermione had cleansed Harry's memory, and it had only come that afternoon.  He'd said goodnight to' Breckin' at the door to the Ministry, saying he had to pop into Flourish and Blotts for a new book for his very pregnant wife, then he'd detoured into the darkened alley, pulling out the cap and yanking it down as far as it would go, using his wand to change his purple ministry robes for ratty black ones.  And now he sat, not far from a table where Crabbe sat getting very drunk with a few other disreputable looking wizards, his fat face flushed, enjoying the rapt attention his tale was receiving._

_"I'm telling you, I_ **_saw_ ** _him," he was saying when someone nearby seemed to scoff.  "We've always known that Malfoy batted for that team.  To be honest, I even knew he had a thing for Potter, when we were in school.  Why else did his dad buy brooms for the whole Slytherin Quidditch team?  It wasn't because old Draco was such a brilliant Seeker.  It was so he could get a look at Potter in the showers."  There was laughter at that.  "But I saw it with my own eyes, gents.  Harry Bloody Potter, porking Malfoy for all he was worth."_

_"Unbelievable," someone near his elbow said.  "Too bad_ _The Prophet didn't get a hold of that; might give everyone a little different take on the whole ‘Savior of the Wizarding World' thing.  I mean, imagine?  We've just endured a month of mourning for the little bugger, and all because a little rough sex got out of hand."_

_"To be fair, Malfoy did set him up. After what he did to all of our fathers, he deserved it."  His flabby face took on a momentarily hard look. "But it was brilliant, blokes, I tell you," he went on, the smile back in place, "Harry Potter, spread out and naked as a jay bird, taking it up the ass.  I had his cherry. He must've been a top, which means the Weasel was his bitch.  There were all kinds of rumors about them at Hogwarts."  He laughed uproariously, and the people around him joined in to various degrees.  Ron stared at the bottom of his glass, fury filling him.  "I'm not queer or anything, but watching Malfoy and Potter go at it was kind of hot.  And it was worth it, just to hear him scream like a girl.  Then Goyle had a go.  After that," he lowered his voice and glanced around, "Malfoy told us to take care of him.  Told you he was a cold bastard.  Kiss em, and kill em."  Ron covered his mouth with his hand and rubbed his jaw, his shoulders stiff, his neck aching from the strain of not immediately turning his head and cursing the little bastard. "The whole thing went on for hours.  The stupid prick wouldn't just lay still and die.  So finally, after Malfoy had shaved him smooth as the day he was born, I used the razor to cut his throat, and we dumped him in a park.  And that marked the end of the fucking ‘Boy Who Lived'". He lifted his glass with a sloppy smile.  "To Harry Potter, the tightest piece of ass I've ever had!"_

_There was more uproarious laughter, and someone bought Crabbe another drink._

_It was nearly two in morning before Crabbe rose unsteadily to his feet and weaved toward the door.  He waved goodbye to the bar man, who ignored him, then stumbled out into the alley.  He didn't notice the tall figure that followed him at a discreet distance, and he glanced around quickly, then faced the empty front of Borgin and Burkes, pushed back his robes, and opened his slacks to relieve himself._

_It was the opportunity Ron had been waiting for.  He shot the Petrificus Totalis at Crabbe from behind, so that the fat lump ended up with his face on the filthy glass, his dick in his hand.  He walked up behind him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and empowered by fury, whirled him around, slamming the back of his head against the wall, his forearm across his throat, his wand held like a dagger against the fleshy skin beneath his chin.  Crabbe's eyes, the only part of him that could move, looked up at Ron, and recognized him with dawning horror._

_"Evening, Crabbe," he said between clenched teeth, towering above the shorter man.  "Have a nice time with your friends at the bar?"  Crabbe's eyes widened almost comically.  "I heard your little tale in there; very informative.  Told me everything I needed to know about your character.  First of all, you're a fucking coward; you, and Goyle and Malfoy.  The only way you could get the best of Harry Potter was to drug him and tie him down.  Secondly, you are a sick and twisted fuck, but I knew that.  And third," Ron leaned in closer, his eyes narrowed, his teeth bared, "You're a goddamned liar.  You didn't have Harry Potter's cherry."  Ron put all of his weight on Crabbe's throat, and he saw his face begin to turn purple.  "In the interest of honesty, that honor went to_ **_me._ ** **_"_ ** _He thrust his forearm hard into Crabbe's larynx.  "And that man has never screamed like a girl in his life."  He pulled back just enough to take something from his robes, his forearm still across the fat man's throat.  "But you're going to," he sneered, "Enervate!"_

_The spell was lifted just in time for Ron to slash down viciously with the knife in his other hand, and Crabbe was still screaming when the blade came up and entered his chest, piercing his heart._

_Ron left Crabbe lying in a pool of his own blood and apparated into the living room of his small, neat house, still shaking with adrenalin, rage and fear.  Hermione was waiting for him, and she stood up from where she sat in a rocking chair, baby Molly asleep over her shoulder.  She stared at her husband's ashen face, at the blood on his hands as he ripped the stocking cap from his head, his hair falling into his eyes._

_"Is he dead?" she asked softly, gently stroking Molly's narrow back.  Ron nodded brusquely.  Something fierce and vengeful flared for a moment in Hermione's brown eyes.  "Good," she said flatly.  Ron nodded again, then made a strangled sound in his throat.  He made it to the garbage can under the sink just in time to vomit spectacularly.  While he fought for breath, Hermione stood behind him, gently caressing his back._

_The next morning, Ron was seated at his desk in the Auror's office when Breckin burst through the door, a copy of the Daily Prophet in his hand.  He slammed it down on the blotter and pointed to a small item, halfway down on the back page.  Ron looked at it absently._

_"Rumored former Death Eater Vincent Crabbe was found brutally murdered in Knockturn Alley just after sunrise this morning.  According to one witness, he had been stabbed and sexually mutilated.  "Whoever did this really hated him," the witness went on to say..."This wasn't a magical killing, but a very personal one..."_

_Ron looked up and shrugged casually.  "Looks like his past caught up with him."_

_Breckin glanced around the office, then his brown eyes came back to Ron, but he could see Harry seething behind them.  "What I want to know is if_ **_Potter's_ ** _past caught up with him," he said flatly.  He and Ron stared at each other for a long time.  "God damn it, Ron," he burst out finally, throwing the paper across the room.  Several people glanced over, then looked quickly away when Breckin shot them warning glares.  The new Auror's temper was somewhat legendary already.  He leaned close to Ron, his voice an angry whisper.  "You should have told me."_

_"Told you what?"  Ron said mildly._

_"Don't fuckin' play games with me.  If you were going to do this, I had a right to be there."_

_One ginger colored brow arched toward his hairline.  "I'll keep that in mind."_

_The look they exchanged was full of mutual understanding._

_Harry and Ginny's relationship gradually returned to what it had been before the attack, after the night that Hermione cleansed his memory.  He spent his days at the Auror's office and around the magical community in the person of Breckin Donnelly, Auror trainee from Ireland, his chin with a slight cleft and his nose thicker then the original version so he wasn't mistaken for a film star when they wandered into Muggle London.  He attracted a good deal of attention from the witches at work, and was an inveterate flirt, but at night he apparated home to Ginny, and became Harry again._

_It wasn't easy for her.  During the daytime, she had to play the forlorn widow; at night she held in her arms the man she was supposedly grieving.  They both very much wanted the pretense to be over, so that they could go back to living their lives, but Malfoy seemed to have gone underground.  He wasn't spotted, and no one wearing Harry Potter's face turned up dead.  The impasse went on for one month, then two, and the inactivity was beginning to wear on all of them.  And Ginny had begun to avoid her parents; she simply couldn't look at Molly's grief, or deal with the way that Arthur tried to ‘help bolster her morale'.  She felt like a fraud, and she couldn't stand it.  Then the whole thing came to a head one morning the kitchen of her and Harry's small house._

_They both rose early to get ready for work.  Harry had already showered and transformed into Breckin, who was too tall and too broad for Harry's clothes, and was sitting at the table in his boxer shorts with the newspaper and a cup of coffee.  He rose and went to Ginny, who was standing at the sink in her short pink bath robe, and kissed her with every intention of going to get dressed.  But Ginny smiled at him invitingly, slipped her arms around his neck, and he'd grinned wickedly before nuzzling her neck._

_"In the mood for something Irish this morning, love?" he teased, his big hand spreading on her bum._

_"Maybe."  She grinned against his cheek, her hands sliding up into the silky brown hair, and he turned his head and kissed her, his mouth opening over hers, his tongue sliding between her teeth.  She made a needy sound in response, and that was all Breckin needed to hear.  He circled her waist with his big hands, and lifted her to the kitchen counter._

_Breckin was a bit more aggressive then Harry was, and Ginny's breath caught in her throat as he jerked open her robe and massaged her full breasts, watching her face all of the time.  She stared into the brown eyes, her lips slightly parted, then spread her long, pale legs invitingly, reached around his waist, sliding her hand down to the firm round flesh of his ass, and pulled him flush against her. His big hands lifted and curved around her narrow hips.  He was hard, and she moaned a bit when his lips dropped to her throat, angling her head to the side to open her throat to him.  He flexed his hips once, then again, rubbing against where she was already wet and needy, and she wrapped her legs around his waist to hold him in just that spot as he moved.  And that was how Molly Weasley found them when she came through the back door without knocking._

_"Ginny, we need to..." she'd been saying, and her words had died on a strangled exclamation.  "Ginevra Weasley!"_

_Ginny jerked away from his burley arms with a squeak, and slid off of the counter, but the damage was done.  Molly stood at the back door and stared at her daughter and the man she believed to be her son Ron's new partner from Ireland, and the implication could not have been more clear.  Ginny's bathrobe had opened down the front and revealed a scanty pink teddy and lacy knickers, and the muscular Irishman was wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. Not to mention that she'd seen her daughters legs locked around his hips, seen him...moving.  He turned his back to her, one hand on the counter, his head dropped forward, but not before she'd seen the tenting in his boxers._

_"Good God, Mum!" Ginny shouted.  "Ever hear of knocking?"_

_"I didn't realize that I might be interrupting something," Molly said darkly, her arms crossing over her chest.  "Ginny, I'm astonished at you.  And_ **_you_ ** _..." she said with loathing, and Breckin turned his head to look at her._

_"No," Ginny said emphatically.  "You want to have a go at me; fine, but you're leaving him alone."_

_Breckin's brown eyes found hers.  "Gin..."_

_"No.  This is between me and my mother, Breckin.  Go get dressed."  She looked livid, and he decided the better part of valor was to let her handle it._

_"Whatever you say," he said softly, pressing a soft kiss to Ginny's cheek and leaving the room with an apologetic look._

_He was still sitting on the end of the bed with his face in his hands when Ginny came in a few minutes later.  He looked up, and his heart sank when he saw that she'd been crying._

_"Sweetheart," he said softly, reaching out to take her hand and pull her down onto the foot of the bed beside him.  "I'm sorry."_

_"It isn't your fault," she said with a sigh.  "I should have known she'd just walk in here some morning.  She never has been one for knocking."_

_"I wish we could tell them," he said regretfully._

_"But we can't."  Ginny shook her head.  "Dad has no poker face whatsoever, and Mum's a disaster keeping a secret.  It would make it too hard for them.  I know that."_

_He looked into her face.  "What did she say?"_

_Ginny took and released a deep breath.  "Which part?  The part where I was desecrating Harry's memory, of the part where I was acting like a horny widow who needed an itch scratched?"_

_Harry winced and pulled her into his arms.  "Baby, I'm so sorry."_

_"No, it's okay," Ginny sniffed.  "I just have to get away from her.  I love her, but if she ever says anything like that to me again, we may never be okay, even when this is over."_

_That day, they found a flat in London and moved into it.  It was all over the Ministry by the next afternoon that Ginny Potter had taken up with her brother's new partner, Breckin Donnelly, and the wizarding world was scandalized._


	10. Now and Then: Chapter 10

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 9 p.m.

 

It was an interesting phenomenon, the way he could detach himself, become almost an observer of the bodies he inhabited.  He couldn't do it when he was in his own form, but when he became someone else, it was as if a small part of him never quite transformed completely.  Harry had noticed it before Hermione had cleansed the memory of the attack; when he was Breckin, Harry's pain disappeared.  He'd refined it since then.  Now, he could watch with clinical detachment, move and make noise and respond, even will his body to react to stimuli like pleasure or pain, without ever personalizing any of it.  It had come in handy more than once.  It was certainly beneficial now, for if Harry had been forced to feel any of what was going on, really feel it, he had no doubt that the elegant dinner he'd consumed would have been all over Malfoy's expensive leather pants.  

He felt the lips on his throat, felt the suction and the bite and the blood, pressed himself rhythmically against Malfoy's leg, but the small moans and startled gasps were a carefully contrived act.  He was even vaguely amused, as if sitting in a corner and grinning, thinking what Ron and Seamus must be making of what they were hearing.  No doubt, they were disgusted.  Seamus didn't understand that even though he did these things, did what was necessary, it wasn't actually him doing it at all.  That ability, whether it had come to him naturally or as a result of Hermione's cleansing, had probably saved his sanity, more than once.  He'd seen the confusion in Seamus' eyes, and he knew that Ron didn't actually like any of it either, but he understood.  He wasn't able to detach himself as completely as Harry was, but then, he couldn't become someone else, either.  

But now was the time, Harry knew, to reconnect himself to Trenton physically, let the young body feel what was happening. His acting skills were only so good. Closing his eyes, he imbued Trenton with a sexual identity completely different from his own; one who enjoyed pain.

Malfoy moved his lips to a new spot on the slender young throat; bit the boy again, harder.  Harry remembered his fleeting thought earlier that the man looked like a Vampire, and he wondered if he fancied himself one as he licked the bloodied wound his teeth had created.  The body responded, forcefully, hardening to rigidity almost instantly.

"So sweet," he hissed against the soft skin.  "So young."  He bit an earlobe with more force than necessary, and Trenton's body began to shudder.  The hand not entwined in Harry's hair slid to the front of his pants and caressed him through the denim.  "So hard.  Is it bothering you, sweetheart?"

"You're bothering me," Trenton panted, his own hand going to Malfoy's and holding it hard against the erection beneath.  

"Want me to help you out with this?"

The boy grunted softly.  "Please," he asked, flexing his hips forward.  "If you don't mind."

"Well, since you asked so sweetly."

Malfoy's long fingers dexterously unsnapped and unzipped the snug jeans, then slipped inside to fondle the hardness he encountered through the soft cotton of his shorts.  "Well…well.  Very nice," he murmured, his lips going back to the small stream of blood that slipped down the white neck, licking at it delicately.  "You're...not as small as one would suppose you might be."

"I've been told that," Trenton gasped when the sinuous hand went from outside of the cotton, to inside of it, curling around the hardened cock. 

"It's a pleasant surprise."  He felt Malfoy smile against his neck.  "Like an unexpected birthday present, or a soft center in a chocolate.  Although," he squeezed and stroked him from base to tip, "perhaps ‘soft' is a misnomer, at the moment."

"You know," the boy said breathlessly, holding onto his ability to speak rationally… tenuously, "this is supposed to be my job.  I'm going to have to offer you a partial refund."

Malfoy chuckled against his neck.  "Oh, no darling," he crooned, his hand moving more quickly, more roughly.  Trenton began to push himself through Malfoy's fist.  "This is for me.  You're so young, and the young," he twisted his fist, and Trenton gasped, "tend to pop off pretty quickly the first time.  So you see," he grinned when Trenton began to moan, "I do this for you now, so that later," his other hand left the thick black hair and slid down the slender back until it was inside the undershorts as well, cupping a round young ass, "you last a bit longer."

"Oh, God," the boy shuddered, leaning against the man's concave chest as the cool fingers slid between his cheeks and found what he was searching for. He ran his finger tip around the tight ring. "Wait. Not without lube," Trenton gasped, but Malfoy just chuckled.  

"But I thought you liked a little pain," he said sensuously, then without warning, entered him roughly.  Trenton cried out, Malfoy moaned in the back of his throat. "God, you're as tight as a virgin."

"You're hurting me," the boy gasped.  

On the other end of the listening device, Ron's jaw hardened, and Seamus looked like he might be sick.  Something was rubbing against the small microphone, making a rhythmic rustling noise, and they knew it must be Malfoy's hand.  Ron closed his eyes.

"Relax, baby," Malfoy crooned, twisting him harder, searching for a spot inside that, when touched, made Trenton gasp and jerk. The burning inside intensified the pressure building in his balls, and he jerked and came with a startled cry.  Malfoy crooned nonsensical words to him, licking his throat, and the boy shuddered convulsively as the tight fist milked him dry, then he collapsed across his leg.  The older man withdrew his hands, and the boy shuddered again.

"See?  Young, and quick," Malfoy said smugly.  He used the back of the teenager's t-shirt to wipe his hands.  "Now, go clean up."  

Trenton pushed himself shakily to his feet and lurched towards the doors, sparing one glance back at the man in the chair, who was now reclining again, his wine glass in his hand, looking bored.  He reached out to brace himself on the wall, holding his pants up with his other, and stumbled from the room. 

Once in the hall and out of sight, Harry straightened, his jaw hard and his eyes flinty, and he fastened his jeans with an emphatic jerk, striding down the hall with a grimace on his face.  He entered the bathroom and closed the door, reopening his jeans, running a cloth beneath the stream of cool water, then cleaning himself impassively.  

"Well," he said dryly, "that was nauseating. Twisted fuck."  He rinsed out the cloth, then kicked off his trainers and dropped his trousers to the floor and stepped out of them, abandoning the under pants in a corner.  When he wiped over his ass, the cloth came away tinged slightly pink.  "Son of a bitch needs to trim his nails."  

Across the street, Seamus gagged.

He yanked the jeans back on over his legs and fastened them, then pulled the shoes back on.  "Well, here is what we know from this little encounter," he said clinically as he tied his shoes.  "Mr. Malfoy is a wasted, drug addicted pedophile who likes to hurt little boys.  Big surprise there.  He wants young Trenton to last longer ‘next time', ergo, Mr. Malfoy has other nefarious plans for the lad before the night is up."  His lips twisted.  "Go figure."  He shook down his pant legs and checked his neck in the mirror.  There were two bite marks, one was still bleeding freely, the other had already coagulated and begun to turn purple.  "Fucking ghoul. You should see what he did to this neck," he said dispassionately.  "Okay, back at it.  And I think we can assume that this little episode just delayed the main event.  Keep your ears open, boys."  He turned and left the bathroom. 

"Oy," Seamus said, wrinkling his nose.  "More than I wanted to know, that's fer sure."  He shook his head.  "Notice he said ‘this body', not ‘my body'?"

"Keeps him sane, mate," Ron said darkly, his mouth grim.

_THEN_

_May 27th_

_Ron walked into his office the morning after Ginny had moved out of her small house in Ottery St. Catchpole, and stood inside the door, staring at the tall dark haired man who sat at the desk across the room from him, his feet up,_ _The Daily Prophet in his hand.  Breckin looked up from the paper, then rolled his eyes and let his feet fall heavily to the floor._

_"It wasn't our fault," he said without preamble.  "Your mum just walked in, and I was standing there in my skivvies..."_

_"Doing my sister on the kitchen counter," Ron finished wearily, dropping into his own chair and rubbing his eyes.  Breckin's brown eyes widened._

_"Molly did not say that."_

_"The hell she didn't."  Ron leaned his elbows on the desk and stared across the room.  "Well, maybe not ‘doing my sister'.  I believe she said you were ‘kissing passionately', but the implication was pretty clear. Have you any idea what last night was like for me? My wife is nine and half months pregnant, and bloody miserable, which means my home life is wonderful, anyway, and my mother spent the evening bending my ear about the low life Irish scum I invited into my sister's life."_

_"Hey," the other man said.  "I resent that.  I was very polite to your mother."_

_"You didn't even speak to her, to hear her tell it."_

_"Better that than to tell her to piss off and mind her own fucking business."_

_"Hey," Ron frowned.  "She's just worried about Gin.  Admit it, mate, the whole situation is pretty bloody weird."_

_"Tell me something I don't know." He shook his head.  "I wish bloody Malfoy would make a move already."_

_"Well, he should, soon.  Hermione said it takes a month for the potion to mature, and that should have happened at least three weeks ago."_

_Breckin frowned at the top of the desk.  "The thought of it makes me sick, you know?"  He looked at Ron, his dark eyes troubled.  "That he's sitting out there, waiting for some unsuspecting kid..."_

_"How do you know it's going to be a kid?" Ron asked._

_"You heard Hermione," Breckin answered, running a hand through the silky brown hair.  When he was distracted, Ron noticed that Breckin had many of Harry's mannerisms.  Fortunately, the only person at the Ministry who knew those mannerisms as well as he did was his wife, and she certainly wasn't going to say anything.  "She's right, I know it.  She said that he could alter the potion so that the age of the subject remained the same, making it my face, but their age.  He's always been good at potions."  He paused, his lip curled.  "Like Snape.  Plus, some street kid would be easier to dispatch than a grown man."  He shook his head.  "I wish we could figure out a way to interface with Muggle law enforcement, so that we could keep track of their missing person reports.  You know he'd be snatching Muggle kids."  He looked at Ron a bit helplessly.  "One Imperius, and it would be all over.  They'd never know what hit them."_

_"We're doing the best we can, Harry," Ron said softly, clearly seeing his friend's concern behind the brown eyes.  "And we'll get him.  You know we will."_

_"But how many will he get first?"  Ron had no answer, so remained silent._

_All they could really do was wait for Malfoy to make some sort of move, but it was becoming more and more frustrating.  Harry had now been Breckin Donnelly for nearly two months, and with Molly Weasley's discovery of him in Ginny's house, Ginny's reputation was being compromised.  Breckin sighed and tossed his paper aside._

_"I do have one bit of news," he said.  "Had an owl from our Madam this morning. Apparently the goon has an appointment for this evening."_

_Ron's eyes lifted, and narrowed.  "Really."  The brunette nodded.  "That is interesting."_

_They'd gone out of their way to make the acquaintance of Madam Vanguard, a woman who catered to the sexual proclivities of the magical population in London, when they realized that Gregory Goyle fairly regularly availed himself of her services, and her whores.  The Madam was an interesting woman.  She supplied escorts mostly to witches and wizards, but she had many muggles working in her employ.  Some in the magical community were attracted to the idea of a liaison with a Muggle, and she managed to keep the Muggle escorts in the dark with a combination of obliviator spells and discretion.  She took good care of them, paid their medical bills and made sure they had clothes and a place to live in exchange for a percentage of their fee. In exchange, most of them were fiercely loyal to her._

_She hadn't wanted to speak to Ron and Breckin at first, until they'd told her who they were investigating.  Just the month before, Goyle had beaten a young woman nearly to death, landing her in a muggle hospital, causing no end of trouble.  But, the Madam didn't dare turn him down.  He was wealthy, came from a well-known pureblood family, and had many friends who also availed themselves of her services.  She had told them she couldn't do anything obvious to help them, but if Goyle returned, she could send them an owl.  And she had.  Goyle had made an appointment for a hooker just that evening, in a Muggle Inn in Cheapside._

_"Have you talked to Seamus?" Ron asked, lowering his voice._

_"He's free," Breckin answered.  He and Ron shared a long look._

_"You up for this?"_

_Breckin's lips twisted ironically.  "In a manner of speaking."  Ron shuddered._

_"Okay, then.  We know what he likes."  The Madam had filled them in, in somewhat alarming detail, about the preferences of Gregory Goyle._

_"It won't be a problem."_

_They had just begun to go over logistics when a tiny grey owl flew into the office, landing gracelessly on top of the maps spread over Ron's desk, flopping about as if it were having a seizure.  Ron huffed loudly and pinned the little bird to the desk with his palm._

_"Stupid feathery git," he growled.  "Be still!"_

_Pigwidgeon hadn't grown much since their days at Hogwart's, and hadn't matured at all.  He looked as if he tried to be still, he really did, but his little body vibrated with excitement as he stared up at Ron adoringly.  Breckin hid a grin behind his hand._

_"Go ahead, laugh, you wanker," Ron said sourly as he untied the scroll that was nearly as big as he was from the bird's tiny leg.  "I've begged Hermione to let me cook this little idiot."  The bird sighed and rested his head against Ron's hand.  "Stop that!"  He shoved him away, but Pig just hopped about on the top of the desk happily.  He unrolled the scroll, and went very still._

_Breckin's grin faded.  "What?"_

_Ron stood, looked around as if searching for something for a moment.  "It's from ‘Mione," he answered, patting down his pockets.  "She's in labor."_

_"Well, go then."  Breckin stood.  Ron continued to search his robe for something.  "What in hell are you looking for?"_

_"Quill," the red-head answered vaguely.  "I need to answer this."  He gestured to the scroll._

_"You don't."  Breckin came around the desk with a laugh and shoved his broad shouldered friend to get his attention.  "Just apparate.  You'll be there before Pig could be."_

_"Oh, yeah."  He took a deep breath, but he looked terrified.  Breckin smiled._

_"For god's sake, go, will you?"  He shook his dark head.  "One would think you'd be better at this after already having done it once."_

_"Just you wait," Ron said ominously.  "It's the single most horrifying experience of a bloke's life.  ‘Mione wanted more kids.  After Molly, I was about ready to have it cut off."_

_Breckin laughed.  "Go on, mate," he said with a gentle smile.  "She needs you, and that isn't something that can be said every day.  Not about your wife."_

_Ron paused.  "Come with me."_

_Breckin shook his head.  "You know I can't," he answered softly.  "Your mum will be there, which she should be, and it would just make it awkward as hell.  I'll stay in touch."  He paused.  "Tell ‘Mione I love her."_

_"Right."  He began to turn to go, then turned back.  "Wait on this thing with Goyle until I can go."_

_He shook his dark head.  "Can't do it, Ron.  You know that."  Ron frowned and began to speak again.  "We may not get another chance like this, and Seamus will be with me.  I'll be fine.  Now go."_

_Ron didn't seem happy about it, but he apparated with a small ‘pop'._

_Breckin dropped into his chair heavily, rubbing his forehead with his hands, wondering how many more moments of Harry Potter's life, moments he was entitled to enjoy, he was going to have to forfeit because of Draco Malfoy._


	11. Now and Then: Chapter 11

_**CHAPTER ELEVEN** _

_NOW_

 

October 30th, 9:30 p.m.

Harry came back from the bathroom, and paused outside of the sitting room door, closing his eyes for a moment, concentrating on what he wanted Malfoy to see.  When he walked back into the small, elegant space, he looked completely different.  A bit uncertain, and for the first time since he'd entered the house that night, a tad insecure.  He paused just inside the door and stared across the room at Malfoy, and the man looked up, one brow raised.

"That took a while."

"I wanted to make sure that I was clean," he replied, allowing himself to sound a little put out.  "That was the order, I believe."

Draco straightened in the chair, his grey eyes watchful.  "Were we insulted?"

"I don't believe I have a right to be insulted,"  ‘Trenton' said a bit tightly.  "It's your dollar."

Malfoy smiled slightly, his eyes over-bright.  "But we'd been having such a good time up until now.  Sweetheart," he held out his hand, waggling it invitingly, "don't be hurt."  The boy crossed to him and tentatively took his hand, pouting a bit.  Draco pulled him onto his lap again.  "I just wanted you to wash up."  He touched his chin with a long finger.  "You were a wee bit messy."

Harry allowed himself to blush.  "Your fault," he said, rolling his eyes.  

"My God, how cute are you?"  Malfoy laughed a little wildly.  "The infant can still blush.  And Draco finds himself intrigued by how a young man who does this for a living can still have such a nice, tight arse." 

Harry noted his use of the third person, saw the wild look in his grey eyes, and knew that the drugs had kicked in, in earnest.  He was going to have to be very clever, and very careful from here on out.

"So, care to explain it to me, dearest?"  Malfoy asked, touching the boy's chest again.  "How is it, exactly, that no one has loosened up that sphincter muscle of yours?"

"I wouldn't have been so tight if you'd given me a bit of warning,"  ‘Trenton' said, a bit irritated.  "And lube would have helped."

"But I like that you're tight." He rubbed his hands over the slender chest, found the small nipples, and pinched the left one harder than necessary.  Harry backed off from the body again, pulled away from the pain. "It's...very arousing."

"I was tight," Trenton said flatly, "because you hurt me.  It's instinctive."

Draco ran his hand up the slender thigh.  "I didn't mean to hurt you," he said solicitously.

"You made me bleed," the boy said very quietly, looked away.  Draco sighed and caught his chin with one long-fingered, cold hand.  Harry fought a shudder inside the young body, but a shiver passed over the surface of his skin.  The older man forced him to look into his grey eyes.

"Very much?" Malfoy asked, avidly watching the young face.

"Enough," came the tight answer.

"I'm sorry," the blonde said with every appearance of sincerity.  "That was certainly not my intention."  And then he leaned forward and kissed the boy, tenderly, gently, almost chastely.  When he leaned back, his eyes were level, and dark.  "Am I forgiven?"

"I won't take anything else up my ass without lube."  Trenton lifted his chin defiantly.  "I'm already going to be sore.  If you tear me up, I'm out of commission for at least two weeks, and I lose a fortune."

Malfoy laughed.  "And you said you didn't have a head for business." 

Trenton's eyes narrowed slightly, but there was humor in them.  "Okay," Malfoy laughed as though making a concession.  "Definitely lube then, lover, because I have every intention of making use of this ass."  He reached around and grabbed the part of the anatomy in discussion, and pinched it, hard.  Trenton shifted on his lap.  

"No bruises, please," he said primly.  "I'm fair skinned.  They show."

Malfoy laughed again, and he sounded slightly maniacal.  "God, you do have a mouth on you."  He shook his head.  "All right, darling, as fun as this has been, I find myself impatient to see under the clothes.  If you don't mind."

"Here?"  The boy looked around.  

"Yes, here."  He grinned wickedly and lowered his voice.  "You're not suddenly shy, are you? No one will see.  I gave Old Grimes the rest of the night off, and I'm sure he's tucked away in his room by now."

"Me?  Shy?"  Trenton ginned wickedly.  "Hardly." 

The boy stood, and toed off the cross trainers, then reached under the pant legs and pulled off first one black sock, then the other.  He rolled them up and set them on top of the shoes. 

"So tidy," Malfoy teased, tossing his hair over his shoulder.  

"Easier to put back on if I don't have to go hunting for them."

"You won't have to worry about that for a while."  The full lips twisted sardonically. 

 

_THEN_

_May 27th, 8:30 p.m._

_Breckin stood in the small room at the Prent and Penny Inn in Cheapside, stripping off his clothes quickly.  Seamus sat in a nearby corner, surrounded by his equipment, idly adjusting volume and watching a hologram of another of the Inn's rooms._

_"He's there," he said suddenly, and Breckin walked over in the process of removing his shoes and saw the small red dot in the other bedroom._

_"Okay, then I need to get with it."  He turned back and kicked off the shoes, then shucked out of slacks and underwear, and pulled off socks, until he was standing in the center of the room naked.  Seamus glanced away, coloring, but couldn't help a quip._

_"Must be nice," he scowled.  Breckin lifted one dark brow.  "To be able to give yourself an enormous schlong."_

_Breckin laughed amiably.  "Ginny's not complaining."_

_"Weasley would kill you for that one," Seamus said, but grinned._

_"Yeah, probably.  Lucky he's not here, then," the dark haired man responded, then took and released a deep breath, lowered his head and closed his eyes._

_Seamus watched the process of transformation with a combination of fascination, and revulsion.  He'd seen Harry do this just once before, and that had been to become an old wizard for a stakeout in Knockturn Alley.  This time, it was much more extensive, and much more disturbing._

_His body shrank, became thin, curvy, short.  His hair grew out, as if it had been filmed in time-lapse photography, until it was long and blonde and curly.  His muscular chest faded, and breasts appeared; full, soft, female breasts.  His waist thinned, his hips rounded, his legs grew long, feminine, and shapely.  But, the most disturbing part to Seamus, was when the aforementioned rather large penis retracted into the body, and a soft patch of pale brown curls appeared instead.  After a moment, the lovely young woman before him raised her head, and her eyes were a clear, crystalline blue._

_"Oy!" Seamus said explosively. "Doesn't that hurt?"_

_"What?" the woman asked softly.  She had a lovely, sort of musical voice._

_"When... when..." he waved his hand uncomfortably towards her groin.  She laughed._

_"No, it doesn't hurt.  But it may be why I make it so big when I'm a man."  She arched one delicately curved brow.  "Maybe I'm over-compensating."_

_Seamus shuddered, then watched as she lifted some scanty underwear from the bed and began to slip it on; first, a black lace bra, then black lace panties that were cut high on the hip and low on the slender belly, then a garter belt and thigh-high stockings.  "This is just bloody disturbing, mate."_

_"Why's that?" came the melodious answer as a short, skin tight black dress was lowered into place over the shapely hips._

_"Because if I met you in a bar, I'd want to do you!" Seamus said loudly, and she smiled seductively._

_"Just goes to show you that you never know about some people, Seamus."  She slipped high stiletto pumps onto her small feet then picked up a shoulder bag.  "And if you want to know what hurts, it's the fucking shoes.  They're a nightmare."  She grimaced, but when she walked towards him, she handled them surprisingly well.  "Okay, I have the card key, and the sensor is in the bag, yes?"_

_"Yeah.  Here."  He handed her another bag, and she glanced into it quickly.  "Velvet lined handcuffs, blindfold, lube," he shuddered, "and an obnoxiously large dildo.  Gar, are all of these people fucked in the head?"_

_"Pretty much," she answered calmly.  "And the other thing?"_

_"It's in there, too.  Under the blindfold."_

_She reached in and withdrew a slender black tube, touched a button on the side, and a wickedly sharp blade shot from the tip, shining evilly in the room's overhead light.  "Perfect."  She touched the button, and it retracted again.  "All right.  Wish me luck."_

_"Somehow seems inappropriate, but good luck."_

_She gave the little Irishman a last smile before leaving the room._

_The room that Gregory Goyle had taken for the night was one floor down, and on the end of the hall.  She walked to it, silently cursing the shoes as they pinched her feet, but managing to appear unaffected by the discomfort.  She arrived at the room, and knocked softly._

_"Come in."_

_She used her key and opened the door, then stepped inside.  The room was a mirror image of the one where Seamus sat, done in a slightly different color palette.  She entered, glancing around the corner, and found Gregory Goyle, reclining on the bed in a white terry-cloth bathrobe, long hairy legs out before him, and a glass of dark ale in his hand._

_"Hullo," he said with what she was sure he thought was a seductive tone.  She thought he just sounded stupid, but she smiled slowly._

_"Hello."  She laid her bag on the dresser.  "My, you're a big one."_

_His brows wiggled and he grinned.  "Everywhere, my dear.  Everywhere."_

_"Well, lucky me."  She threw her long blonde hair over her shoulder._

_"And you're bloody gorgeous," he said appreciatively, patting the bed beside him.  "Why don't you come on over here, join me for a drink?" he said, his lips curling._

_"Oh, I will," she smiled at him through thick lashes.  "Why don't we just get business out of the way, first?"_

_"On the dresser, in the envelope," he said, taking a casual sip of his beer.  She turned and picked up the white envelope, and opened it, absently counting the crisp pound notes inside.  She smiled at him over her shoulder._

_"My, my," she grinned.  "You are paying for quite a party."_

_"Madam Vanguard tells me that you are something...very special."_

_Her smile was faintly predatory.  "Madam Vanguard has no idea," she crooned, and crossed to him gracefully._

_Breckin Donnelly walked into St. Mungo's at nearly one o'clock in the morning, his big body vibrating with adrenaline, heading unhesitatingly to the third floor, where the maternity wing was.  He wasn't even remotely sleepy, and he figured by that hour of the night, he could get a peek at the new Weasley without running in to any of the rest of the family, and maybe have a chance to talk to Ron.  He had information that he needed to share.  But, when the doors to the lift opened, he was startled to see Ginny, Molly and Arthur standing in the hallway with Ron.  He almost pushed the button to close the doors, but Ron saw him and smiled wearily.  Caught, Breckin emerged and walked toward the small cluster of redheads, unable to miss the tight pinching of Molly's lips, and Arthur's carefully redirected gaze._

_Ginny came to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he squeezed her while watching Molly turn her back and cross her arms._

_"You're okay?" she asked breathlessly, relief in her voice.  She'd known where he was going, had paced restlessly for the last three hours._

_"I'm fine," he answered.  "Why are all of you still here?"  He whispered against Ginny's ear.  "Is everything okay? Are Hermione and the baby all right?"_

_This last he directed at Ron, and the new father nodded with a happy, if somewhat exhausted smile.  "Yeah, they're both fine, mate.  Little Harry just wasn't in a hurry to get here."  Ron smiled, and Breckin took and released a deep breath.  He'd known for two months that they planned to name the baby after him, but hearing it was still something of a blow.  He closed his eyes quickly and hugged his friend, but not before he'd seen a quick sheen of tears in Ron's red-rimmed eyes.  He patted him firmly on the back._

_"You do know who the baby is named after?"_

_Molly's voice was sharp, and the two men broke apart to look at her._

_"Mum," Ron said imploringly.  "Don't."_

_"Molly, please."  Arthur entreated, taking her arm.  She shook him off with an arch look, and then looked back at the dark Irishman._

_"He's named after Harry Potter.  They were friends since they were eleven, he was Ginny's husband, and a part of this family for over a decade."  She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, but there was such pain and hurt in her eyes that Breckin actually felt sorry for her._

_"I know who Harry Potter was, Mrs. Weasley," he said softly._

_"Then you should know that there is no one,_ **_no one_ ** _," she repeated for emphasis, "who could ever take Harry's place in this family."_

_"I'm not trying to do that," he said softly._

_"Aren't you?"  She asked a bit shrilly.  "You become my son's partner, which Harry had been for years.  You move in with his wife..."_ __

_"Mum, stop," Ron begged once again.  "Breckin is my friend.  He's Hermione's friend.  And Ginny...."_

_"And Ginny what, Ronald?  I mean I can certainly understand what she sees in him," her eyes moved over him with insulting thoroughness, "although I would have thought that she'd have enough respect for her husband's memory not to take him to bed quite so quickly."_

_"Molly," Arthur pleaded, sounding mortified._

_"I should go," Breckin said, starting to turn away._

_"Yes, you should."  Molly's chin wobbled, and tears threatened to spill. "All the way back to Dublin, or wherever it is you're from."  Ron made a frustrated noise in his throat._

_"No."_

_Ginny spoke emphatically, her brown eyes blazing.  She caught Breckin's hand and stepped in front of him, pulling it around her waist and holding it, pressed, against her flat stomach.  She stared at her mother, her chin raised, her mouth a hard line.  "Mum, I love you," she said tightly.  "I will always love you, but I love Breckin, too."  Molly made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort.  "And he's going to be a part of this family, whether you like it or not."  She leaned back against his hard chest.  "I'm pregnant with his baby."_

_She felt the big body behind her stiffen, and wished she'd been able to give him the news differently, but her mother had left her little choice._

_Molly stared at her, ashen faced, for at least ten seconds.  Then, with an injured sound, she turned and walked away, her tears spilling.  Arthur gave Ginny a helpless look and followed her.  They entered the lift and disappeared behind the closing doors without looking back at the three young people in the hallway._

_"Ginny?"_

_She turned in his arms and stared up into startled brown eyes.  Reaching up, she laid the palm of her hand against his cheek._

_"I'm sorry.  I wanted to tell you in private, but she has to stop.  We don't know how long this is going to last, and she has to..."_

_Her sentence trailed off when he pulled her to him with a shattered sound, his shoulders shuddering, his face buried in her long red hair.  Ron wiped his eyes, and turned to go back into the room where his wife and newborn son slept._

 

* * *


	12. Now and Then: Chapter 12

_**CHAPTER TWELVE** _

_NOW_

 

 

October 30th, 9:45 p.m.

 

As he pulled the black t-shirt up and over his head, Harry watched Malfoy's face.  His hungry eyes never left the firm, young body; his expression tight.  He looked like a starving man, and the boy was a steak. Harry had Trenton take his time folding the t-shirt, watched the way to older man stared at the pale, nearly hairless chest.  It was the oddest thing, to be performing a slow strip tease with every appearance of casualness, while being filled with rage and disgust on the inside.  When his slender hands went to the waistband of his jeans, and he unbuttoned and then unzipped them, Malfoy's fair brow lifted.  "What happened to the underwear?" he asked as black pubic hair came into view.

Trenton's face showed distaste.  "I threw them in the garbage," he answered, pushing the snug jeans down his strong young legs.  "I certainly wasn't going to put them back on.  You're the one who said they were messy."  He straightened and slowly folded the black trousers, feeling Malfoy's eyes burning into him.  When he dropped the jeans on top of the rest of his clothes, he propped his hands on his slender hips and lifted his chin.  

"Well?  Do I pass inspection?"

Malfoy took and slowly released a deep breath, straightening in his chair.  "That depends," he answered then made a twirling motion with his hand.  Rolling his eyes, the boy began to turn slowly in place.

For a tall man, Malfoy moved with almost deadly silence, speed and grace.  One moment, he was in the chair, the next he was standing behind Trenton as he turned away from him.  Without a sound, he'd grabbed the slender wrists and yanked them, hard, behind the boy's back.  He yelped involuntarily.

"Hey!"  He tried to look over his shoulder as he felt his wrists being lashed together with something unforgiving.  "What are you doing?"

"Just adding a little spice, darling.  Don't tell me you aren't into a little rough play.  Not the boy who likes pain."

He began to struggle a bit, but Malfoy just laughed.  

"Oh, do fight.  I love it when they fight."

"You're scaring me," Trenton said, trying to keep his voice calm.  That amused Malfoy even more.  

"And I love it when they're scared, so it doesn't get much better than you, dear Trenton ‘no last name'.  However, for the rest of the evening, I think I'll call you something else.  I think I'll call you..."  He leaned forward, dropping his head so that his mouth was next to the shell of the boy's ear, "Harry.  Harry Potter," he whispered, licking into the ear, thrusting his tongue in hard.  Trenton tried to pull away, but couldn't.  Malfoy's other hand had come up and viciously anchored his head in place while he thrust quickly, rhythmically, fucking into the sensitive ear.  Malfoy bent his knees and brought his hips level with the more diminutive frame held captive in his arms, and rubbed his leather covered erection against the boys tight ass.  Taking his mouth from the now wet ear, he bit the white skin of his shoulder and smoothed a hand over the flat stomach, down, until he gripped the flaccid penis in his cold hand and squeezed, hard. 

"Stop," ‘Trenton' gasped.  "Please." That seemed to amuse Malfoy, and he came out from behind the diminutive boy, and grinned at him, and for the first time the extent of his madness showed on his face.  He stroked the soft penis roughly, waiting until it began to respond to the stimuli in spite of Harry's nausea.  He had meant to pull back further, he tried to pull back, but Malfoy had ambushed him so quickly that there wasn't time. It wasn't as if he hadn't been expecting something like this, but Malfoy had finally managed to take him by surprise.  For some reason, that assault on is ear had left him more shaken than the hard, cold grip on his cock.

Malfoy reached into his back pocket with his other hand, and pulled out a pair of plain black wire rimmed glasses, opening them and attempting to put them on the young face with one hand.  Harry jerked his head away, and Malfoy slapped him, viciously.  The sound echoed in the room and dropped the small body to his knees.  Kneeling before him, Malfoy carefully placed the glasses on the boy's thin, frightened face, smiling the whole time.  Finally, Harry was able to retreat from the heart pounding terror enough to think.  Trenton looked up at him in horror even as Harry's mind moved quickly over his options.  "After tonight," Malfoy said almost regretfully in a strange, sing song sort of voice, "I don't think you'll be ‘the boy who lived' anymore."

Across the street, Ron was out of his chair, staring at the speaker.  "Shit!" He shouted.  "Shit, shit."

"Relax, Ron," Seamus said quickly, but even he was shaken by the sound that slap had made, by the insanity in Malfoy's silky voice. "We can still hear him, and he's still got the sensor.  And look."  Ron looked at the hologram, at the two red dots glowing in the drawing room.  "We know where he is.  The hologram detects heat, there's nowhere for him to hide.  Even if the listening device gets left in that room, and they go somewhere else, Harry has the sensor, and we have the hologram."

"But you heard him," Ron said, running his hand over his face.  Something was wrong; he knew it.  "If he's tied, he can't get to the sensor.  He didn't have time to trigger it, Malfoy made sure of it."  He shook his head.  "Something's gone wrong.  I can feel it."

"Will you relax?"  Seamus said reassuringly.  "I'm telling you.  Harry's the best, Ron.  You said it yourself."

Ron stared at the two glowing lights in the drawing room.  "I don't like it, Seamus."  He shook his head.  "This turned too fucking quick.  It's like he knew he'd been set-up!"

 

_THEN_

_May 28th_

_"So, what do we tell him?"  Ron was asking Breckin as they made their way down the hall to Shacklebolt's office.  With Molly's outburst and Ginny's announcement, there had been little opportunity for them to talk at the hospital, and they'd been summoned to their superior before they'd had a chance to compare notes about the night before._

_"I won't lie," Breckin said flatly._

_"Do you think he knows it was us?"_

_"It wasn't us, it was me," Breckin whispered without breaking stride.  "And I won't lie."_

_"It was **you**_ _this time.  It was **me**_ _before.  What fucking difference does it make?  It was **us**_ _."  They exchanged an enigmatic look._

_"I won't apologize for it," Breckin said tightly.  "I'm not sorry."_

_"Neither am I."_

_"And I won't quit ‘til we're done."_

_"Agreed," Ron said emphatically._

_The tall brunette shrugged.  "Then I guess we take whatever comes."_

_"They could chuck us into Azkaban."_

_"They could."   They were outside of their superior's door, and they exchanged another long look before Breckin raised his hand and knocked sharply._

_"Enter."_

_They opened the door to Kingsley Shacklebolt's corner office and walked in quietly, closing the door behind them and facing his large desk.  He was standing at a bank of windows, his side to them, reading a copy of the Daily Prophet.  They exchanged an arch look._

_"Have a seat, gentlemen," he said without lifting his eyes from the paper, and they sat in two chairs that appeared before the desk.  Ron fidgeted uncomfortably.  Breckin stared at his boss without any expression on his handsome face.  Twenty seconds went by, then thirty, then a minute.  Finally, the tall, dark man turned and sat in the chair behind his desk, his gold hoop earring catching the morning light.  He leaned back, his eyes lifting to them._

_"Imagine my surprise," he said conversationally, "when I picked up_ _The Daily Prophet this morning and found out that Gregory Goyle had met his maker last night at an Inn called the Prent and Penny in Cheapside.  The paper was woefully short on details, but a quick trip to the Inn filled in the blanks."  Ron sniffed and shifted his feet; Breckin stared.  "It seems that Mr. Goyle had purchased the services of a prostitute last night, a very pretty blonde, according to witnesses who saw her on the elevator.  Muggle hotel operators have these interesting little things called security cameras in the lifts of their hotels.  I suppose I could arrange to get a hold of a copy of that tape, but I don't imagine it would provide us with much help, do you, Mr. Donnelly?"_

_Breckin did not respond, and his expression didn't change._

_"The maid who went in to make up Mr. Goyle's room this morning made a grizzly discovery," Shacklebolt went on casually, as if telling them about the weather.  "Mr. Goyle had had his throat cut, but first, someone had inserted a rather large... object into his rectum, removed his most prominent reproductive organ, and then shoved it in his mouth."  He paused while that sunk it.  Ron shot Breckin a quick look.   "The Muggle police seem to be in agreement that the petite blonde they've seen on the video tape, both entering and leaving Goyle's room, would probably not have been capable of subduing such a large man, so they are currently stumped as to who could have committed such an ugly crime."  He turned level eyes to Ron.  "As I know that your wife was giving birth to a boy last night; congratulations, by the way, I think it's safe to assume that you were at St. Mungo's."  He turned those expressionless eyes to Breckin.  "However, I don't believe we know where Mr. Donnelly spent his evening.  Care to enlighten us?"_

_Breckin's expression didn't change.  "In Cheapside."_

_Ron ran a hand over his face and shook his head, then Shacklebolt looked at him.  "And the night that Mr. Crabbe was killed; where were you, Weasley?"_

_"Knockturn Alley," he answered, almost confrontationally._

_Shacklebolt sighed and stared at both men, first one, then the other.  Finally, he turned dark, opaque eyes to Breckin.  "Did you get anything we can use to nail Malfoy?"_

_The two men walked silently, side by side, back to their small office, and then Ron closed the door before collapsing into the chair behind his desk.  "I'll be goddamned," he wheezed.  Breckin shook his dark head._

_"Sure hadn't expected that," he said as he lowered himself to the corner of Ron's desk._

_Ron looked up into Breckin's brown eyes.  "What do you think?"_

_The Irishman shrugged.  "I think he has a point.  A good one."_

_"But, do you really want..."  His voice trailed off._

_"What?"  Breckin said, one dark brow arched.  "Do I want to be an assassin?  It wasn't my original career goal, no. But then, not much in my life has gone the way that I thought it would.  And he's right, about the remaining Death Eaters.  Putting them away isn't an option.  Most of them are too powerful; they'll just break out again."_

_Ron stared at him, his blue eyes thoughtful.  "We are uniquely qualified, especially you," he said softly.  "No one could ever trace you.  But, how do you_ **_feel_ ** _about it, Harry?"  He touched his fist to his chest. "In here?"_

_"Harry would hate it," he answered flatly.  "Harry would want to see if he couldn't rehabilitate the fucking bastards, get them to sit in a circle singing Kumbaya, or some such shit."  He looked at Ron then, his eyes infinitely cold, and lifeless.  "That part of Harry died two months ago, Ron.  It's gone forever."_

_"Maybe not forever," Ron said, a little helplessly._

_"As long as I'm Breckin Donnelly," he retorted sharply.  "As long as Harry Potter has to stay dead… and we have no bloody idea how long that's going to be."_

_"But it would all be on you, mate," Ron persisted.  "You heard Shacklebolt.  I can back you up, Seamus can back you up, but the actual confrontations, the actual..." his voice trailed off._

_"Murders, Ron.  You can say it."_

_"All right."  The redhead said tightly.  "The actual fucking killings would be on you.  Can you live with that?"_

_"You do," Breckin said flatly.  "Is what you did to Crabbe keeping you up nights?"_

_Ron's eyes looked shadowed for a moment.  "Sometimes, yeah.  I hear the bastard screaming in my sleep.  I'm not sorry I did it; I'll never be sorry.  But I puked all over my kitchen after; did I tell you that?"  Breckin just stared, that same flat, emotionless stare.  "I think it stays with you, mate.  No matter how just, no matter how necessary, I think killing someone stays with you."_

_"Maybe," his partner said softly.  "Maybe not. It doesn't matter.  Not anymore.  They took my humanity, Ron.  Once that's gone, the rest is easy."_

_Ron looked into the soulless brown eyes, and felt a deep sadness settle over him.  Breckin was right; for all practical purposes, Harry Potter was dead._

 

* * *


	13. Now and Then: Chapter 13

_NOW_

 

 

October 30th 10:13 p.m.

 

“What does that mean?”  ‘Trenton’ said, his voice quivering.  “That I won’t be the boy who lived?”

Malfoy looked almost sympathetic as he allowed his fingers to smooth down the side of the young face.  “Because, you’ll be dead, darling.” 

Trenton screamed then and tried to jerk away, but Malfoy was right there, and too strong.  He wrapped his hand around the boy’s throat and shoved him down onto his back, straddling his chest.  It pinned Trenton’s arms awkwardly behind him, and the man’s weight put a painful strain on his shoulders.  “Get off me,” he cried, curling his knees and pulling them up hard into Malfoy’s kidneys. He grunted in pain, but it didn’t unseat him from his place astride the boy’s chest.  The older man cursed, doubled up his boney fist, and punched the slight figure beneath him in the mouth.  Harry tasted blood as Trenton’s lip split. The boy began to sob.

“See, you made me hurt you,” Malfoy said tightly.  “Why did you do that?”

“You think I’m just going to lay here and let you fucking kill me?”  Trenton cried out, tears mixing with the blood on his mouth and chin.

“But that’s the way it has to be, darling.”  Malfoy said calmly.  “Harry Potter has to die.  He took everything that ever mattered to me.  My parents, my rightful place as the favorite at Hogwarts, my birthright as the Dark Lord’s natural descendant.  And the son of a bitch has to die!  Over, and over, and over again.”  His voice began to tighten, his eyes to narrow, and his pupils all but disappeared in a sea of gray, his sanity lost to the drugs surging through his system.  His moods were swinging like a sapling in a high wind.

Ron and Seamus exchanged a quick, horrified look.  “What the ruddy hell does that mean?” Seamus gasped.  Ron shook his head.

“But I’m not Harry Potter, whoever the fuck that is,” the boy screamed.  “My name is Trenton, Trenton...”

Malfoy shook his head, his long blonde hair swinging around his shoulders as he stared down into the ravaged face.  “For our purposes, you are Harry.”  He smiled slowly, and the expression chilled the figure beneath him to the bone.  “And I believe that Harry has been a very, very bad boy.”  He withdrew his wand from the back pocket of his leather pants, and Trenton stared at it in fear when he pressed it against his throat.  

“What…what is that?”  

“That, dear boy, is a wand.  A wizard’s tool, in the right hands, a miracle.”  He held up one long-fingered, deathly white hand.  “And these are the right hands.  Shall I show you?”

The boy shook his head frantically, even as Malfoy pressed the tip of his wand into the center of the first bruise he’d noticed on the pale throat, and leaned forward, all of his weight on the hand he used to grip the pale forehead, holding the boy’s head still.  Green eyes widened behind the glasses in terror.

“ _Talis Stabilis,_ ” he hissed, and the horror of what he’d heard struck Harry just as the tip of Malfoy’s wand became a scalpel and punctured the soft white flesh of his neck.  There was no Trenton, no Harry.  There was only white hot pain, and he cried out hoarsely.

“Jesus,” Ron said, lurching to his feet, “What’s he doing to him?”

“ _Talis stabilis_ ,” Seamus muttered, then blanched.  “It means pointed stake.”

“I’m going in there.”  Ron started for the door. 

“Wait, Ron.  Wait.”  Seamus stood, pleading. “You burst in there now, and he could kill him.”

Ron was breathing too fast, staring at the two red dots in the drawing room, his hands sweating.

Harry’s eyes rolled into his head and he felt the tip of the wand moving inside the wound.  “ _Removeo_.”  Malfoy muttered, and then he was withdrawing his wand from the puncture wound, staring at the tip.  “Ah ha,” he murmured softly, reaching up and plucking something from the tip of the bloodied wand.  “I thought I felt something under my tongue earlier. And what is this?”  He looked down at the boy, who was breathing shallowly, and whose eyes were closed.  He laid his wand on the smooth chest, smearing blood on the white skin, and slapped him.  Trenton’s eyes shot open.  “What,” he asked with deadly precision, “is this?”

Harry stared at the small blinking capsule Draco held in his blood covered fingers.  He knew what it was; it was his sensor.  The son of a bitch had cut it out of his neck.

“It’s a tracking device,” he said softly, his breathing tortured. 

Ron and Seamus exchanged a horrified look. 

Malfoy cocked his head to one side. 

“What?”  One blonde brow arched in amusement.  “You aren’t going to lie?”

“Why should I lie?”  The boy answered, tears rolling back into his dark hair, blood flowing down to pool on the carpet beneath his head.  He could feel it pumping, hot and thick, from the deep wound in his throat.  

“Who are you working for?”  Malfoy asked tautly, “who knows you’re here?”

“Madam Vanguard,” he answered, forcing himself to sound confused.  

“Madam Vanguard equips her whores with a tracking device.”  Malfoy scoffed.  “You expect me to believe that?”

 “I don’t care what you believe,” the boy spat, arching under the man again.  Malfoy just laughed and pushed down on his throat, causing him to cry out again as he pushed against the fresh wound.  Blood welled between his white fingers 

“Why would she do that?”  Malfoy asked conversationally, even as the boy panted.

“Because some of us have disappeared,” he answered vengefully.  “She’s keeping track of us.  She’ll know if something happens to me, and she’ll make sure you get what’s coming to you.”

At this, Malfoy laughed; a long, maniacal sound that had the hair twitching on the back of Harry’s neck.  “Oh, you are sweet,” he said finally, wiping at tears of mirth when his laughter ran its course.  “Darling, she doesn’t give a shit about the fact that you’re here, or she wouldn’t have sent you.  She may be keeping track of her other little sluts, but your days in the stable are numbered.”

“That’s not true,” Trenton spat, but he paled.  “She does care.  She takes care of us.”

“That is probably true, for everyone she doesn’t send to me.”  He ran his hand through the blood on the pale throat, then brought it to his lips, tasted it.  “So warm,” he said, his eyes darkening.  “You see, my love,” he went on casually, as if he weren’t licking blood from his long fingers, “Madam Vanguard and I are old friends, and she knows just exactly what I do with the little darlings she sends me.  You’re the fourth.  She doesn’t expect to get any of you back, because I pay her the equivalent of what it takes you five years to earn, shagging every poor sick bastard in England.  And she knows better than to cross me.  So you see, this,” he held up the tracking device and then flicked it aside as if it were lint, “means nothing.  I can even understand her wanting to protect her investment.”  He frowned a bit.  “Although, she and I are going to have to have a little conversation about her sending me merchandise that’s bruised.  Oh, well.  I suppose we should stop this.  You’re making a bit of a mess on my rug.”  He pointed his wand at the wound on Trenton’s throat, and the boy flinched.  “ _Reparo_.”  Malfoy said negligently, and he felt the flow of blood stop, felt the stinging burn ease.  

“We’ve got him.”  Seamus said hoarsely, but triumphantly as well.  “It’s been imprinted now.  He confessed to at least four…”

“Good, then we can get in there now.”  Ron said, pulling his wand from his sleeve.

“We have to wait to see if he moves him.”  Seamus answered softly.  “Just thirty more seconds, Ron.”  

Ron huffed but waited, chewing his lip.

Malfoy stood up then and put the wand back in his pocket, then grabbed the slender arms of the young boy and lifted with almost super human strength, bringing him to his feet, pushing him in front of him and towards the doors.  “Where are you taking me?” ‘Trenton’ whimpered.  Malfoy laughed.

“Someplace fun,” he answered.  “You and I are just getting started, Harry.”

“That’s it,” Ron said darkly.  “The sensor is gone.  We have to move quickly.  He could be taking him anywhere.”

Seamus watched the hologram as the two red dots moved from the drawing room, down a long hall, and through two more doors, then stopped before another.  “I know where he’s taking him,” Seamus breathed, watching as the dots moved forward two more inches, then disappeared.  Ron cried out in horror.  “No, no.  It's okay, Ron.  I know were he’s taking him.  I knew this might happen. The walls are too thick for heat to be read, but I know where they are.”

“Where?” Ron said frantically, his blue eyes desperate.  “Where, Seamus?” 

Seamus swallowed, looking a little unnerved.  “There’s a dungeon.”

“Ah, sweet Christ.”  Ron cried, remembering what they had done to Harry in that dungeon before.  “Come on.” 

He grabbed Seamus by the collar, and they hurried out into the night.

 

 

_THEN_

_May 28th_

_“All I care about,” Shacklebolt had said when discussing their new ‘duties’ with them, “is that we get documentation on each and every one of these scumbags before you off them.  That way, if any of this is ever traced back to this department, I can justify our actions.”_

_Ron and Breckin had understood, and had given him all of the documentation he’d wanted, beginning with Crabbe, then Goyle, then the next thirteen confirmed Death Eaters that they had dispatched with almost cold-blooded efficiency.  Ron and Seamus set the stings up, many times working in concert with Madam Vanguard, who had grown tired of seeing her employees brutalized and killed.  She hadn’t minded taking money from the dark wizards, until it had started costing her so much.  It seemed that most of the Death Eaters had some sort of perversion, and Harry could cater to them all, just long enough to lull the victim into a false sense of security before killing them.  They went after them methodically, one by one._

_Ron worried about his friend, who became more and more like a machine, but for the first time since the war, they were actually making headway against the forces of darkness in numbers that could not be denied.  The remaining Death Eaters went as far underground as they could, knowing that someone was systematically killing them off .  One of the few still out there, undeterred, was Malfoy.  However, before he’d killed Goyle, Harry had gotten valuable information from him about his old school chum._

_Where most of the killings were concerned, Harry never revealed himself to his victim.  Simply did the job, and got out.  Goyle had been a bit different. Goyle had been personal.  And because of Goyle’s little fetishes, it had been almost too easy._

_He’d seduced him as the blonde, handcuffed him to the bed, and blindfolded him.  Even lubed him up and treated him to his own special perversion, all while the man whimpered in pleasure.  For a man who made such a public show of swaggering masculinity, it had startled Harry a bit to find out that he liked to be restrained and buggered with a giant dildo while being called ‘Gina’.  While he’d been moaning and writhing on the bed, Harry had risen, stripped off the woman’s clothes, and become Harry Potter for the first time in front of someone other than Ron, Hermione or Ginny in two months.  Then he’d opened the switch blade, straddled Goyle’s fat legs, held his strong forearm across his larynx much as Ron had with Crabbe, and pulled off his blindfold.  The look on the dissipated face when he’d seen Harry above him had been something that Harry would remember with vengeful satisfaction to his dying day. He’d known he was staring into the eyes of his own death. With the blade pressed to his double chin, he’d sobbed and admitted that they had in fact taken Harry’s hair for polyjuice potion, and that Malfoy had already used so much of it, killing off unsuspecting street kids and young male hookers, that he didn’t have much of it left, and soon would have to be going to Madam Vanguard for his own special requests.  Those had been the last words that Gregory Goyle had ever uttered._

_Since that day, Breckin and Ron had done their normal Auror duties, but had spent most of their time with Seamus, documenting horror and transgression after horror and transgression, dispatching what was left of Voldemort’s followers.  For five months, Shacklebolt never spoke to them about what they were doing directly again, other than to nod briskly at them in the halls.  Their co-workers had no idea what they were doing, either, but they knew that that Donnelly character was one scary bastard.  “No emotion in the eyes at all”, they said to one another, “don’t know how Weasley stands him.”  And the fact that Harry Potter’s widow was carrying his baby was a cause for both gossip, and consternation._

_Ginny was worried, Ron was worried, and Hermione was worried. The longer it took for them to get something on Malfoy, the colder Breckin became, the further and further away Harry seemed.  Then, almost exactly five months later, they got the break they’d been waiting for._

_Finally, they’d had an owl from Madam Vanguard, at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, with all of the information that they could have wished._

_“I’ve had a request from a pureblood wizard that I find particularly disturbing,” she’d written.  “This person pays me extremely well, but I’ve become afraid that by sending young men into his house, I’m signing their death warrants.  I can no longer have it on my conscience.  Up until now, he simply wanted young Muggle boys, between the ages of 13 and 16, with no other particular special qualities other than that they be disease-free.  The first few I sent returned, worse for wear, with their memories obliviated, clearly suffering the after-affects of polyjuice potion, but the last two simply vanished. Then, this morning I received an owl with a very specific request.  He wants a young boy, between the ages of 14 and 16, with black hair and green eyes.  Slender, pale, wearing black clothing and heavy gothic makeup._

_I cannot fill this request.  I don’t have anyone like that, and frankly, even I know who he is describing. I refuse to participate in this any further, and I hope that you can make use of this information._

_The young man is to present himself at Malfoy Manor at exactly 7 p.m._

_Madam Vanguard.”_

_Breckin had read the note, then stood, his chair crashing back against the floor in his and Ron’s Spartan office._

_“What is it?” Ron had asked, seeing his partner’s ashen face.  He’d walked over and handed the note to Ron without a word.  Ron had read it, his own eyes widening.  He’d looked up, his face every bit as pale as Breckin’s._

_“Son of a bitch,” he’d said roughly.  “We’ve got him.”  He grabbed Breckin’s big hand.  “We’ve got him!”_

_“Not yet, but we will,” he’d answered, the first sign of life Ron had seen in weeks in the brown eyes._

_Months before, when they’d been staking out the Manor they’d found the small abandoned house across the street and down a block, and Seamus quickly and efficiently moved his equipment into it while Ron had gathered supplies, and Breckin had sent an owl to Ginny._

_“Please go to the Burrow after work,” he’d written.  “Tell Hermione.  We’ll get there as soon as we can.  B.”_

_Ginny had read it with her heart in her throat.  It was going down, she knew it, and she rubbed her hand over the curve of her belly, her eyes clenched closed.  She’d either have her husband back that night, or she’d lose him forever, and she was terrified._

_When Breckin had arrived to join Ron and Seamus at the stake-out, he’d been his old self, bright-eyed, laughing, anxious to get going.  It had almost frightened Ron more than his quiet brooding had.  They had to get this right.  They had to. It was the only way to save Harry; he couldn’t go on being Breckin without losing himself permanently. Ron was certain of it now._

 

* * *


	14. Now and Then: Chapter 14

_NOW_

 

 

October 30th, 11:00 p.m. 

 

 

 

Harry was in hell.  He knew, because he’d been there before.  And this time, it was worse, because there were no drugs altering his perceptions.  He was coldly, cruelly sober, fighting an on going battle with himself.  Did he let himself feel what was being done to the small, slender body he inhabited so that he could react to it honestly and not alert Malfoy to the fact that he wasn’t high, or did he hold back and look for an opportunity to strike out?  The sensor and the listening device were both in the drawing room upstairs, but he knew Ron.  The moment he’d heard the bastard hit him, he’d been on his feet headed out the door.  Only Seamus could have stopped him long enough to get him to wait to see where they’d gone.  Hopefully, they were in the house, searching for him even now.  The only way Ron would abandon him here were if he were dead; Harry knew that.  Ron would come.  He had to believe that Ron would come.  The only reason he’d let this go as far as it had was to get the inhuman prick admitting to the other murders, then Ron was going to help him finish him. For this one, it was to be both of them. That had been the plan all along.  It wasn’t Ron’s fault that the whole thing had gone south so bloody fast.

Malfoy had shoved him down a flight of stone stairs, laughing when he’d fallen and brutally scraped his knees.  He’d hauled him to his feet again, and pushed him along in front of him into the stone sub-basement that Harry only remembered from his nightmares.  There were torches in brackets on the walls and the smell of damp and rot, and water ran in thin, black rivulets down the old, stone walls.  It was the part of the house that had once been a medieval fortress, and it showed in every craggy, rough, dark and mold-filled corner.  

When they arrived at a large, studded oak door, Harry had begun to fight instinctively, even considered for one wild moment transforming to his regular form.  At least then he’d be bigger, stronger, and more able to match Malfoy for size and strength.  Except that Malfoy wasn’t operating under regular strength; he had that hellish cocktail of drugs in his system that made him almost preternaturally strong, even given his emaciated appearance.  Better to wait just a bit longer, keep being Trenton, hope that Ron and Seamus would find him.  He could do it, he told himself as Malfoy shoved him into what could only be described as a torture chamber.  He could do this; he didn’t have a choice.

Propelling him forward roughly, Malfoy pushed him to the edge of a stone table and then untied his hands, holding him between himself and the rock with the weight of his body.  As the feeling began to return to his hands with stinging, tingling pain, Harry thought quickly.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, you know,” he said softly, his voice almost impossibly young.  “If you’d just stop manhandling me, and promise me that you’ll let me go after, I don’t mind almost anything.  It’s just that you’re scaring me, and…”

“Shut it!”  Malfoy elbowed him roughly in the back of the head, and Harry’s knees buckled as he saw stars.  “The only thing I want to hear out of you is you begging me to kill you.  Now get up on the table.”  

Harry gave it one last try.  “Draco, please,” he said softly.  “What do you gain from killing me?  I’m not him.”

“For tonight,” Malfoy said near his ear, his body heavy against his back, “for as long as you survive, you are.”  And he clubbed him so hard in the back of the head that Harry had to quickly pull back from it so that he didn’t pass out.  Passing out would be disastrous, for his transformation would commence instantly without his control.  He had to stay lucid.  He had to keep enough distance between himself and the pain to still be able to function mentally. He let his knees go and fell forward, as if he’d been knocked unconscious.  He heard Malfoy curse roughly, then grab him under his arms and lift him almost effortlessly onto the stone tablet, rolling him to his back.  He faked insensibility as his arms were stretched over his head, and he heard Malfoy mutter ‘ _Restivo_ ’.  Immediately, there were leather bonds around his wrists, binding his hands tightly together and lifting them so that they hung from the ceiling, his head and shoulders raised off of the rock.  He let his head hang limp as if he were insensible, rolling it to the side.  Through eyelids narrowed to slits, hidden by the thick black lashes, he watched as Malfoy moved down and did the same with his feet, only this time he pulled them so that he was spread-eagled on the slab.  When the restraints slipped around his ankles and tightened, lifting his feet until they were suspended above the table, the horror that went through Harry was very real.  The last time, after…after Malfoy, they’d lifted him until he was hanging from the ceiling, and he remembered it with hideous clarity.   

He maintained his pretense of unconsciousness and watched Malfoy as he began to strip off his clothes, muttering to himself the whole time.  He was completely mad, Harry realized, and there was no reasoning with a madman.  Malfoy threw his shirt aside, revealing a torso devoid of muscle, skeletally thin, skin as white as bone.  He pulled off leather boots and dropped them heavily to the floor, then unlaced the leather trousers and shoved them down to step out of them as well.  His legs were like matchsticks, the only color in them, the slightly darker blonde of his pubic hair, and the angry pink erection that bobbed obscenely, pointing at the ceiling.  It looked…unnatural; swollen, as if the skin were raw.  Harry closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing.  There had to be a way out of this; there had to be.  Where were Ron, and Seamus?  _Please hurry_ , he said over and over in his head like a mantra.  He could pull back from the pain in this body, but he could still be killed in it.

 

 

Ron rounded another corner in a basement where all of the stone walls looked the same, growing quietly frantic.  They’d found blood on the steps, more blood on the floor at the bottom of them, but look as they might, they’d seen no trail to follow. The torches in the brackets were lit everywhere, down the halls to the left and the right.  They could be anywhere, and cold sweat ran down Ron’s sides in rivers.  _Harry_!  He called out in his mind.  _God, Harry, where the hell are you_?

 

Harry stiffened slightly as a breath of something seemed to go through his mind.  It was as if he could hear Ron, lost in the tunnels, trying to figure out where he was.  He could hear him in his head; _Harry!  Where the hell are you?_

‘ _Here, Ron_ ’, he thought desperately, fighting the panic in his mind, fighting to project his thoughts through the stone.  _‘Here, here’_ ….

 

“ _Here, here_ ….”  Ron stopped, held his hand up, and listened.  Just like the night in London, the night that Harry had disappeared and he’d found him in that ratty little park, there was a sensation of pressure under his breast bone pulling him to the right.  He started in that direction but Seamus grabbed his arm, frantically shaking his head, and pointed the other way.  Ron shook his head back just as vehemently, and pointed to the right, then went that direction, moving as silently as he could, not caring whether Seamus followed him or not.  The silence in the old basement was complete; the only sound that of water dripping to the stone floors.  “ _Where, Harry?_ ”  He concentrated hard, his eyes closed.  “ _You have to let me know where…_ ”

  

_“You have to let me know where….”_

Harry heard the thought as clearly as if Ron were standing beside him, whispering into his ear.  ‘ _Here, Ron_ ,’ he thought desperately, ‘ _the end of the corridor.  Down here…_ ’  He would have to make some noise, he knew it now. It was the only way Ron and Seamus would find him. He pretended to come awake slowly, moaning as loudly as was reasonable.  

“Welcome back.”

He looked up and saw Malfoy standing beside him, a twisted smile on his face.  He had slipped black velvet robes over his boney shoulders and lifted the hood to cover his white blonde hair, leaving it open down the front to reveal that distended erection.  Harry recognized with disgust the Death Eater robes that Malfoy senior had worn the night that Voldemort had been restored to his body.  

“What are you going to do?”  He asked, allowing his voice to quaver but echo off the stone, his green eyes wide.  

“Just a little ritual.”  Malfoy answered, stepping closer.  “Something entertaining, for me at least.”

“What kind of ritual?”  He didn’t have to fake the trepidation in his voice.  He’d seen his fair share of Death Eater rituals.  Malfoy frowned at him.  

“Too much chatter,” he sneered.  “I want you to be quiet now.  Don’t make me gag you.” 

No, that wouldn’t do, so Harry breathed quickly through his nose and bit his lip.  

Without warning, Malfoy reached out and wrapped his hand around Harry’s soft dick, squeezing the base hard.  “Those pills should have prevented this,” he muttered under his breath.  “He has to be hard.”

Harry closed his eyes in revulsion, but concentrated on filling the organ in Malfoy’s hand with blood.  It wasn’t easy; he was more frightened than he cared to admit, and having more trouble distancing himself from what Malfoy was doing than he’d thought he’d have.  It was impossible not to feel faintly nauseated by what he was forcing this body to do, but gradually, he heard Malfoy grunt.  “That’s more like it.”  

Malfoy squeezed hard around the base, forcing blood into his cock, then did it again, then again.  Eventually, he was hard enough that he was protruding straight up from his groin; not completely erect, but no longer soft.  He felt his eyes jerk open and gasped in startled pain and surprise when he felt something tight fastened around the base of his penis.  He looked down and saw a studded silver cock ring holding the blood in the distended organ, now angry and red.  Malfoy smiled, then leaned over and licked it from base to tip once slowly.  “Lovely,” he smiled, taking the single drop of pre-cum from the head and licking it from his finger lasciviously.  He then walked around the foot of the tablet and stood between Harry’s elevated, spread legs, studying the body displayed before him with a sinister smile.  

Finally, after what felt like a small eternity, Malfoy climbed up on the table between Harry’s legs, then climbed over his hips and straddled him, allowing the velvet of his robe and his balls to brush against the strained, painful erection.  He rose up on his knees, and looked into Harry’s widened eyes, his own red-rimmed and quite utterly mad.

“Do you know who I am?”  He asked in a ringing voice.

“Draco?” Harry answered hesitantly, sounding breathless.  A slow, superior smile curled the blonde’s full lips.  

“Indeed, I am.  Draco.  Draco Malfoy.  Have you heard the name?”  

Harry shook his head quickly, knowing that was the expected answer.  _‘Hurry, Ron,’_ he thought frantically, ‘ _hurry, please, God….’_

“Malfoy, for my father, the great Death Eater, Lucius Malfoy.  Only, my mother shared a little secret with me just before she died.”  He leaned forward, his hands braced on either side of Harry’s straining shoulders, his eyes bright with wild humor.  “Would you like to know what it is?”  He leaned even closer, his lips brushing against Harry’s earlobe.  “Lucius Malfoy wasn’t my father after all.  You know who was?  Tom Riddle.”

He leaned back, thinking he had imparted wonderful news.

Even though Harry’s head was spinning, he fought to maintain an expression of confusion. 

Malfoy sneered.  “You don’t know who Tom Riddle was, do you, you stupid Muggle?  He was the greatest wizard of the age, the Dark Lord, Lord Voldemort.  And I am his only son.”

Harry stared into Malfoy’s eyes, horrified.  Could that be true?  He looked just like Lucius Malfoy, but then, his wife had looked precisely the same.  White blonde, coldly superior.  Malfoy was nearly a year older than Harry; Voldemort had still been in power when he’d been conceived.  It was possible.  The ramifications of that were mind-boggling.  

“I should have been the heir of a great dynasty, the son of the ruler of the known world.  The true Heir of Slytherin.  Do you know why I’m not?”  His face filled with ugly red color.  “Because of you.  Because of you, Harry Potter.  You killed him; you took it all away from me.  My father, my mother, my followers, my fortune; all gone, because of you.  Once isn’t enough for you to die.  You need to die over, and over, and over again.  You need to hurt, you need to suffer. And each time you die, I will take your hair, and keep making you and killing you until I tire of killing you.  It’s the only thing that I can do, and still, it doesn’t satisfy the ache.  Shall I tell you why?”  Harry was horrified to see tears fill the insensible, wild eyes.  “No matter how many times I kill you, you won’t die, because you’re here.”  He slammed his fist against his own chest.  “That’s truly the ultimate betrayal of my father; that somehow, through some dark magic, even dead you’ve hexed me, obsessed me.  I need you, like air, like water.  You never go away!” Malfoy shouted, his face contorted in crazed rage. “You’re inside of me, you bastard. You’ve branded me.” He leaned forward and hissed the next words directly into Harry’s face, each word enunciated carefully, solemnly, a vow. Well tonight, I plan to return the favor.”  

He reached behind himself then, his cold, boney fingers circling Harry’s painful cock. “Don’t,” Harry said hoarsely, fighting against the bonds, trying to shift away. “Please.”  Draco snorted.

“Silence!” He laid his wand on the stone at Harry’s side, and reached out and slapped him hard, digging the long nails of his other hand into the swollen, pain filled length.  Harry shuddered, and Malfoy laughed.  “And you so were worried about lube.”  He said disdainfully.  “It wasn’t your arse I was interested in, darling boy.  It was your beautiful cock.”  He picked the wand up again and uttered an incantation, the wand pointed between his own legs.  “But lube,” he sighed deeply, rubbing the head of Harry’s dick against his opening, “can be truly beneficial.”  He lowered himself then, and Harry couldn’t stop the groan of despair that filled his throat. 

“Tonight,” Malfoy went on doggedly after a shallow breath, pausing to allow his body to adjust to the invasion, “with you inside of me, I’m going to brand you.  Then you can die wearing my mark on you, just the way your mark is on me.”

Draco lowered himself all of the way down and Harry’s back arched teeth clenched .  It hurt; the studded ring dug into the sensitive flesh, creating a burning white pain.  Malfoy began to move, and every time he seated himself fully, pain stabbed through Harry; through his dick, his balls, his thighs and stomach.  He tasted the bile rising in his throat and choked it down.  There was so much pain that tears filled his eyes.  

“That’s right.  Cry for me, Harry.  Cry for me the way I cried for you, night after night.  God, I hate you.  God, god, god, I hate you.”  He began to keen in his throat as he moved.  “I hate you, but you’re mine, mine, mine,” he chanted, moving up and down, one white hand clutching his own cock, his mad eyes on Harry’s.  Harry finally closed his, turning his face away, but he couldn’t escape the pain, or the voice.  “ _Inuro ussi ustum_!”  Malfoy whispered, and Harry’s eyes shot open as Malfoy lifted his wand and held it before Harry’s pale, frightened face.  The tip glowed fiery red for a moment, then turned blue, then white.  Heat seemed to emanate from it in waves.  Malfoy paused, his body tightening painfully around Harry even as he lowered the tip of the wand to hover over the pale skin of Harry’s chest. “You’ve destroyed everything that mattered to me, Harry Potter, and still I can’t let you go.  That’s my curse.  I wear your brand on my heart.  Well, now, you can wear mine… in _hell_.”

He brought the white hot tip of the wand into contact with Harry’s skin, and there wasn’t enough emotional distance in the world to shield him from the pain.  Harry didn’t have to manufacture the scream that tore from his throat.  

 

‘ _Hurry, Ron, hurry…_ ’ he heard it as clearly as if Harry were standing in front of him, and he moved quickly down the corridor.  He was still being pulled in this direction, and he saw the end of the hallway and the large studded door.  ‘ _Here, Ron_ …’ he heard Harry’s voice utter, ‘ _at the end of the corridor_ …’  Glancing around for Seamus, who had gone the other way, he froze when he thought he heard a voice, then crept closer.  Yes, there was definitely a voice coming from beyond that door.  He paused, his head bent toward the sound, when a pain-filled scream rent the air, and Ron jerked, his heart slamming into his rib cage.  There could be no more delays.  Yanking open the door, he pushed through; and entered a nightmare.

The room was something straight out of a medieval torture chamber.  There were chains on the dark stone walls, and devices for the delivery of pain displayed as if it were a museum.  But in the center of the room was a stone pedestal and Ron’s eyes were drawn to it in horror.  Harry’s slender, young, naked body was suspended from the ceiling, arms, legs, muscles and tendons straining, toes and fingers curled tight.  His head was back and he was gasping through sobs.  And Malfoy…Ron could scarcely process it.  Malfoy was sitting astride Harry’s pale, painfully spread body, moving himself on him, fisting his own dick with one hand while a wand he held shaking in his other burned a jagged line into Harry’s pale chest.  Ron could see the raised red welts, smell the burning flesh.  And he could hear Malfoy chanting, “Scream you bastard, scream.  Wear the mark, like I wear yours.”  

Harry’s shattered cries and Malfoy’s own insane mutterings prevented the blond hearing Ron behind him.  In his element, calling on the almost stoic calm instilled by years of Auror training, Ron moved with cat-like grace as he stalked across the floor and climbed quietly onto the pedestal behind Malfoy.  He stood between Harry’s feet, right over Malfoy’s shoulder…

 

Harry knew when the door had opened.  Through the white agony of the burning on his chest, he knew that Ron had come.  He felt him.  He opened agonized eyes and looked up, and Ron was there, like some avenging angel; red hair flaming around his face, blue eyes filled with fury, lips pulled back in rage, standing directly behind Malfoy, and the stupid bastard didn’t even know it.  

Green eyes met blue and held, and shuddering, he nodded.  Hard jaw flexing, Ron nodded in return.

 

Malfoy was close, so close; he could feel the orgasm building in his balls as he slammed himself up and down on his enemy's cock, branding his chest crudely at the same time.  It was the ultimate experience, the penultimate thrill, and he could scarcely breathe in his twisted pleasure.  He only became aware that something seemed wrong when the boy stopped screaming.  Thinking he’d passed out, Malfoy looked up from the ragged ‘m’ his wand was burning into the white flesh and tried to focus on the pale young face.  And then... he saw Potter’s eyes. Not Trenton’s; Potter’s. 

He froze and watched in stunned disbelief as the soft, white skin of youth faded, the hair shortened, the beard roughened.  The chest beneath his wand spread and filled and darkened, rough with black hair, muscular, no longer smooth and white and childlike.  Draco was breathing frantically, recoiling in terror from the hard man’s body that was now beneath him, larger still inside of him, staring in horrified wonder into the eyes he’d thought closed forever.  He started to scramble away, tried to stand, but brutal, biting fingers pressed down on his shoulders, and turning, he looked up into the face of fury; blue eyes burning, red hair blazing.  In fact, everything about Ron Weasley seemed to be on fire at that moment, and Malfoy had no time to think, no time to move.  Weasley’s lips pulled back in a feral snarl, and he grabbed Malfoy’s chin with one hand and gripped his shoulder with the other.  

“Hello, sweetheart,” Ron hissed through his teeth.  “Did you miss me?”  Malfoy’s eyes widened in horrified recognition just as Ron Weasley’s hands tightened and his shoulders bulged, and with a quick, decisive jerk he snapped Draco Malfoy’s neck.  The sound echoed in the stone chamber.  For just a moment, Malfoy stared at him in frozen wonder, then his eyes rolled back into his head, and his broken neck lolled obscenely to the side, head at an impossible angle.  He crumpled and tumbled off of the pedestal to land, shattered, on the hard stone floor.  

Using his wand Ron quickly severed the bonds on Harry’s hands, catching him against his chest before he fell hard to the stone table.  He pulled him into his shoulder, his arms around him, backing away to look into his face when Harry hissed in pain.  

“Ron,” he gasped, jaw rigid, “please.”  He gestured weakly with his hand, and Ron looked down and saw blood pooling in his pubic hair.  

“Son of a bitch,” Ron groaned, shaken.  As gently as he could with trembling hands, he unlatched the foul spiked metal from around Harry’s tortured flesh and threw it across the room, then waved his wand once more and Harry’s feet were free as well.  Sitting back for just a moment, Ron ripped the robe from around his shoulders and wrapped it around the shivering body of his best friend.  He pulled him into his chest and Harry curled in on himself, his face pressed to Ron’s sternum, his whole body shuddering.

“God, Harry.  I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Ron said, his voice thick with tears as his hands moved over Harry’s quivering back and shoulders.  “I should have gotten here quicker, I should have kicked in the bloody door when he slapped you.  Oh, God.  I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Ssssh,” Harry reached up with a cold, shaking hand and placed his fingers over Ron’s lips.  “It’s okay.  You got here in time.  That’s all that matters.  You got here in time. “

“Are you alright?  Are you hurt anywhere besides,” Ron had to stop for a moment.  He felt something shattering in his chest, and it was hard to breathe.  “Jesus God, Harry,” he cried brokenly, “what can I do?  Tell me what to do?”

“Just…don’t let me go,” Harry gasped, his forehead pressed to Ron’s collar bone and his hands curling hard into Ron’s shirt.  “Don’t let go.” 

Ron closed his eyes convulsively, his throat working, and held him as tightly as he could.  “Never.”  He swore, his hand moving to the back of Harry’s head, his fingers curling in his black hair.  “Never again.”

Seamus peaked around the edge of the doorframe, his wand in his hand, his hazel eyes comically wide.  “Jaysus, Mary and Joseph,”  he said hoarsely, staring around the stone room, seeing the torture devices, then Malfoy’s broken body on the floor.  “Holy mother of God.”

Harry, still trembling with the aftereffects of the pain and the terror, lifted his face and pressed it against Ron’s neck.  “We’re going to have to obliviate Finnegan,” he said breathlessly, his teeth rattling, but Ron nearly wept when he heard humor in his voice.  “If we don’t, he’ll never be the same.”

“We can do that,” Ron said shakily, then made a desperate sound in the back of his throat.  He lurched to the side, and it was Harry’s turn to hold him as he leaned over and vomited spectacularly on the stone floor. 

 

_NOW_

 

October 31st, 12:47 a.m.

 

 

Ginny stood at the window in the Burrow living room, rubbing her hands up and down her slender arms over and over again.  She didn’t feel it; she didn’t see the view.  She stared into the night but her mind was a hundred miles away.  

Was he alright?  Had they done what they set out to do?  Would he be coming back to her?  There were no answers to any of the questions that swirled through her mind, and yet she continued to dwell on them.  ‘ _Harry, please come back_ ’, she thought with dizzying repetition, _‘please, please, please come back.  I need you.’_   Her hand curled protectively over her swollen belly.  _‘We need you.’_

Hermione watched Ginny’s rigid back with sad eyes.  She handed sleeping baby Harry to Arthur and crossed the room, slipping her arm around Ginny’s waist and holding her against her side.  

“I’m scared,” Ginny whispered through bloodless lips. 

“I know,” Hermione answered, equally quiet, her own eyes lifting to the darkened yard.  “So am I.”

When they’d first arrived at the Burrow, Molly had been delighted to see Hermione and her grandchildren, but clearly astonished that Ginny was with her.  Ginny and her mother hadn’t exchanged a single word since that night at St. Mungo’s five and a half months before.  She’d stood in the kitchen looking both welcoming and wary all at once.  Arthur had broken the ice by coming to Ginny and taking Molly from her, saying gently, “She’s too big for you to be carrying in your condition.”

Ginny had looked into her father’s kind eyes, tears in her own, and had murmured, ‘thank you, dad.’  He’d winked and lifted Baby Molly over his head to blow a loud raspberry on her round tummy, sending the toddler into a paroxysm of giggles. 

Of course, that had been before Hermione had calmly and quietly explained why they were there.

“Ron and Breckin are on an assignment,” she said in answer to Molly’s question.  Her mother-in-law's mouth had tightened at the mention of Breckin’s name.  “A very dangerous assignment, Mum, especially for Breckin,” Hermione continued stoically, and Molly had blinked quickly in consternation.  Hermione lowered her voice even further.  “He didn’t want her to be alone in case it goes wrong.”

“Could… could that happen?”  Molly whispered back, her eyes on her daughter’s rigid shoulders and pale face. 

“It’s a very real possibility.”

“Oh, dear,” Molly had breathed, paling.  That had been nearly three hours ago. 

Molly came up behind Ginny and touched her in the middle of her tense back.  Ginny jerked, and turned to find herself face to face with her mother.  “Can I get you anything, dear?”  She asked gently.  “Pumpkin juice?  Something to eat?”

Ginny’s body thawed somewhat.  “No, mum, but thanks.”  Molly nodded slightly and turned away.

Out in the yard, behind the house, there was a distinctive ‘crack’.

“That must be them,” Arthur said, lurching to his feet from where he’d been sitting on the couch next to his sleeping granddaughter, laying baby Harry on the cushion with a pillow between his tiny body and the edge.  

“Oh, God,” Ginny wheezed, her hand reaching out blindly to Hermione.

“It’ll be okay,” Hermione said, her own hand trembling as her fingers clutched Ginny’s icy ones.  

Arthur walked toward the back door just as it burst open, and Ron stepped through, his hair windblown, his robes clutched around his throat against the chill of the fall night.  

“Ronald?”  Hermione cried.  He looked up, his expression shuttered, then stepped aside and let the smaller, dark-haired man behind him step into the room.

He was pale and drawn, and there were unmistakable lines of pain around his eyes and his mouth.  He’d refused to go to St. Mungo’s first, and Ron hadn’t been able to dissuade him.  “After,” he’d said emphatically, “after I see my wife.”  He was wearing black; black slacks, black turtleneck, black robe, but all of the austere dark color simply made the green eyes behind the wire rimmed glasses stand out that much more.  He was windblown and looked exhausted and needed a shave, and Ginny had never seen anything so wonderful in her life.  Her eyes filled as he took one step, then another towards her, then rushed to her when her knees began to buckle and he caught her in his arms, crushing her against his strong chest.  He buried his face in her throat and she wrapped her arms around his neck, fisting her hands in his thick hair and began to sob brokenly.

“What… what…”  Arthur sputtered, staring at the young man whose body he’d seen go up in flames months before. 

“Oh my God,” Molly wheezed, both hands over her mouth.  “Oh, dearest God.”

Arthur turned to Ron, who was closing the door.  “Ron…”

“We couldn’t tell you, dad,” he answered the unspoken question, holding out his arms to Hermione.  She went to him and pressed her face in the center of his chest, her eyes squeezed closed, and he held her gently.  “I’m sorry.”

“But that’s…  then that is…”

“Yes, mum.  It’s Harry.”

“Oh!”  Molly cried out, and burst into tears.

“Why couldn’t you tell us?”  Arthur persisted.

“Auror’s office, dad,” Ron said flatly.  “You know the drill.”

Arthur nodded.  He worked at the Ministry; he did understand.  Ron and Harry were no more at liberty to discuss their work than Hermione was hers as an Unspeakable.  “The only ones who knew were Hermione, Ginny, Shacklebolt and Finnegan.  It had to be that way.”

“Does it have anything to do with the attack?”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Ron answered, but then he nodded once shortly. 

Molly continued to stare at the back of Harry’s bent head, her hands on her cheeks.  She turned back to Ron suddenly.

“But, where’s Breckin?”

Harry kissed Ginny gently, holding her snug against his side as he sobs subsided, and turned.  He and Ron exchanged a long look, and finally Ron shrugged as if to say ‘whatever you want, mate’.  Harry took and released a deep breath. 

“I _am_ Breckin, Molly.”

She stared, dumbfounded, her mouth slightly open.  “I’m a metamorphmagus.”  He went on gently.  “We found out last year.  I’ve been Breckin Donnelly since March.”

Her mouth worked, and they all saw the moment that the truth of the statement forcefully hit her.  New tears filled her eyes.  She looked between her daughter and her son-in-law, and began to sob softly.  

“Molly…” Arthur said, his arm going around her shoulders.  

“I’ve been so hateful,” she sobbed.  “Oh Ginny, I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.”  Ginny came to her and wrapped her in a firm embrace. 

“It’s okay, mum,” she said over and over, smoothing her hand on her mother’s stocky back.  “You didn’t know.  No one knew but us.  It’s okay.”

Molly stepped back and looked at Harry, tears still spilling down her soft cheeks, her jaw trembling.  He walked to her and pulled her into his arms, his dark head bent over her fading ginger hair, and the room exhaled collectively in relief.  It was over.  It was finally over.

Ron hugged his sister, his mum, his dad.  Arthur wrapped Harry in a hearty embrace, until his son-in-law had to pull back with a grimace, his pale hand on his chest.  “Okay son?”  Arthur asked, and Harry nodded wearily.  

“Nothing a quick trip to St. Mungo’s won’t fix,” he answered. 

Hermione hugged Ginny, and then turned to Harry, and they stared at each other for a long moment before walking into each other’s arms, and staying there.  He breathed in the scent of her hair, pressed his forehead to hers.  “Thank you,” he whispered, and kissed her gently on the lips.  She touched his cheek tenderly before turning back into her husband's arms. 

Harry went back to Ginny and leaned into her, staring down into her cinnamon brown eyes, his hand curling around the tight round bulge of their child pressing into his stomach.  Kissing her again gently, he slowly lowered himself to his knees at her feet.  The room fell silent as the others watched him.  

With both hands, he caressed her belly with aching tenderness, then leaned forward and placed his lips against the hard lump.  Ginny let her hand come to lie on his head, her fingers sliding into his thick, black hair as he turned his face and rested his cheek against her.  

“Hello, baby,” he whispered, his eyes drifting closed as his fingers continued to move on his child.  “Daddy’s home.”

* * *


End file.
